Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand in this place this evening with some experience of the aged-care system. I come to this place with a passion to see our elderly citizens relieved of some of the burden and complexity currently impacting their lives. My father tragically lived with the devastating disease dementia. It's a disease that does not discriminate in who it attacks. It's a disease that robs a person of their independence and requires him or her to seek services in the aged-care sector. The reality is more than 413,106 people are living with dementia now. It is thought that there'll be about 536,164 people living with dementia by 2025 and about 1,100,890 by 2056. Dementia is the single greatest cause of disability in Australians over the age of 65 and the third leading cause of disability burden overall. Dementia is the second leading cause of death in Australia.

My parents were both in their 80s. As my father's health deteriorated, my mother was forced to seek support from the aged-care sector. Now, I worked in the community sector for some time, so I was not unfamiliar with government systems, but the aged-care system was a whole new experience. It was so very complicated and complex. I want to be very clear at this point: all of the staff we dealt with were extremely helpful, kind and caring people, but the system was just so complex. It was very difficult for my mother to ask for help, because she did not want to be seen to be not coping.

The assessment was thorough, and very emotionally difficult for my mother. Luckily, I was able to be there to support her. We need a system that is designed to understand that this is a very emotional and difficult time for families because they are confronted with the reality of their loved one's condition and the fact that life will never be the same again. The nurse who did the assessment was very compassionate, but we were not able to access the level 4 home-care package that my father needed. However, we were offered a level 2 package. It took more than 18 months for my father to secure a level 4 package. This put undue stress on both my mother and my father. Sadly, my father had a bad fall, which meant that he had to enter an aged-care facility. This broke my mother's and father's hearts, as they had been married for nearly 61 years.

Entering an aged-care facility just creates another level of stress on everyone concerned. The system is, once again, complex, and the care very expensive—if you can get a room. Just to make matters worse, at this time my mother also had a fall whilst visiting my father and broke her pelvis. So she now needed an aged-care assessment. This was done in her home but on an online iPad. It took five hours, and, when the nurse hit the submit button, all of the information went blank on her screen. So the assessment had to be done again at another time, and this was incredibly stressful for my mother.

That is a very brief overview of my personal story of dealing with aged care in this country. But my story is just one of many, of the people in Herbert. As you can see, it is not a very pleasant or happy story. That certainly is not the fault of the nurses, doctors or staff. And, certainly, in my instance, it was not the fault of the provider. They went above and beyond their duty to assist my parents.

The difficulties and stresses that I have identified must be fixed by this out-of-touch Turnbull government. Right now, there are 323 people waiting to receive home-care packages. Nationally, there are more than 100,000 older Australians waiting for packages. The Turnbull government should be absolutely ashamed of this fact, but, sadly, the public has come to expect situations of this nature from this government.

When you're sick, you see the cuts to hospital funding and also the attempt to privatise Medicare. When you need access to higher education, university funding is cut. When you're a pensioner and you're living below the poverty line, the pension is cut and your energy supplement is taken away. When you live in Townsville and you need a job, the government refuses to fund vital infrastructure. So, needless to say, when you need access to aged care, what does this government do? It cuts funding to aged care.

You only have to look at the Turnbull government's budget handed down last month to understand that those opposite have not put the best interests of older Australians front and centre. There was not one new extra dollar for aged care in Australia in this year's budget; instead, there was a pretence of giving new money to the sector. But the reality is that there isn't any additional funding for aged care. The reality is that the Abbott and Turnbull governments have collectively cut aged-care funding by billions over the past five years. Collectively, these LNP governments have cut aged-care funding in every budget. Every single year, the LNP have cut aged-care funding. There have been cuts to the Aged Care Funding Instrument and funding cuts to residential aged care—billions of dollars that are no longer flowing to support older Australians in residential care. All of this talk about funding aged care is just that—all talk.

In the lead-up to this year's budget, the Turnbull government began to frame its message around aged care, particularly the support it would give older Australians choosing to age in their own homes. Even the Minister for Health said on 6 May that this would be a good budget for aged care. Minister Hunt said:

It's going to be a very good budget for health and for aged care in particular.

That was on 6 May 2018. There were also big figures leaked to the media by the government, to the tune of $100 billion. Closer inspection, however, highlighted the fact that the $100 billion was not an increase of funding across the forward estimates. There was no new money; the $100 billion was already in the forward estimates. Closer to the budget, there were more reports that the government would be investing new money into home-care packages. But again this did not happen. It was just political spin. And, whilst this government is spinning its web of myths, there are vulnerable older Australians who are left waiting for access to aged-care services.

This country has had three ministers for aged care since 2013 and not one has done anything about fixing this national crisis over the past five years. In fact, it has only become worse, because we are an ageing population. Older Australians will not be fooled by this uncaring government. The Turnbull government budget has cut money from residential aged care to pay for home care packages. This government is, in fact, robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just because you rob from one to pay another does not mean that you are fixing the problem. In fact, all the government has done is fund 14,000 new places in new home care packages over four years, and 3,500 places a year isn't enough to keep up with the demand. The waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017 alone. We need 105,000 beds yesterday, not 3,500 beds a year.

This commitment is nothing but a cruel joke. It's particularly cruel after promising older Australians it would address the waiting list. So, after all the rhetoric by the Treasurer and other ministers, it turns out that there is, in fact, no new money at all in the budget to fund in-home care and residential aged care. Smoke and mirrors were used to pretend that there was a plethora of money being allocated to aged care. Clearly, the Turnbull government overreached and underdelivered and has let our most vulnerable citizens down. Over the past five years, the Abbott-Turnbull government slashed billions of dollars from aged care and has been solely responsible for the growing waiting lists that exist for in-home care.

This government would rather give an $80 billion tax cut to big business and the banks than properly fund our most vulnerable citizens who need aged care. Our older Australians deserve a fair go and they certainly deserve better than they're getting. During their years, they worked hard to help build this great country and, when they need support in their hour of need, this government is letting them down. But the Treasurer is all too happy to find not just one, two or three dollars for big business and the banks. Again, I say that he is very happy to find $80 billion in a tax cut for them. Yet, he can't even find an extra cent for our failing aged-care sector. Shame on this government!

And then have this bill on the table, a bill that, once again, keeps older Australians waiting for months and months. This bill seeks to amend the Aged Care Act 1997 and Australian Aged Care Quality Agency Act 2013 to make provision for a single set of Aged Care Quality Standards that will apply to all aged-care providers under the Aged Care Act. The bill will also vary the functions of the chief executive officer of the Aged Care Quality Agency to reference the Aged Care Quality Standards. Currently, there are standards that cover three different areas of care. They include four standards for residential aged care, two standards for home care and two standards for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program quality review. The new single sets of standards will apply across all areas of care and will be effective from 1 July 2019. These new standards will focus on quality outcomes for people rather than on provider processes and have been driven by the sector and other stakeholders since 2015. This is the beginning, but we certainly cannot stop here. More needs to be done and, certainly, more funding is needed.

At this point I would like to raise the fact that the funding around aged care is now what we call person-centred or customer-centred. We need to ensure that people actually understand what that term means and what that service looks like. It doesn't simply mean that you have the person sitting in the room while everybody talks around them. It means that education needs to be provided to staff to actually engage the older citizen in the conversation and engage them in the processes that are occurring around them.

A very fine example of this I experienced with my father, who was in an aged-care facility. He would not eat. The person coming to get him for his meal would come and say, 'Come on, it's time to come and have dinner.' He would say, 'No,' and sit there crying, and the person would walk away. I was there one evening when this happened. I said, 'You can't do this. My father needs to eat.' She said: 'Oh, this is person-centred care now. If they say they don't want to eat then we don't make them eat.' I said: 'He has dementia. He's not particularly well. He needs to be engaged and talked with. You need to build a rapport with him and encourage him to come down to the table and have his meal.' For my mother, who was in her 80s, to be there for three meals a day to ensure that he ate was an unfair burden on her, and it certainly wasn't keeping her healthy.

I urge the Turnbull government to fund aged care properly and to fund it now. The Turnbull government has been part of the creation of this aged-care crisis. It ignored the fact that aged care was in crisis and that the budget does not fix the aged-care crisis. The Turnbull government hasn't shown much compassion for older Australians on this account. The Prime Minister is expecting Australian citizens to work until they're 70. He has also tried to axe the energy supplement, as I mentioned earlier, to two million Australians, including approximately 400,000 age pensioners. On behalf of the 323 people on aged-care waiting lists in Northern Queensland, I demand action from the Turnbull government. We must pay respect to our older citizens because they deserve no less.

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