Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to aged care in this country, we know those opposite are nothing more than a sham. I'm delighted to follow on from my colleague the member for Herbert, who is a terrific advocate for seniors and pensioners in North Queensland and has been a strong advocate in making sure that seniors in my home state are looked after. We know that, whilst the government are handing out billions of dollars to big business and the big banks, over 100,000 elderly Australians are languishing without appropriate aged care. All the spin, all the substance that the government like to put out—the smoke and mirrors that the government like to whirl around when it comes to question time or the minister talking about so-called record funding—won't change the fact that 100,000 elderly Australians are languishing without appropriate aged care. In my opinion, this is a government who simply don't have their priorities right. Rather than ensuring our elderly and vulnerable are provided with appropriate aged care and the dignity they deserve, the government persist with looking after their mates at the top end of town, suppressing wages, cutting school funding, cutting hospital funding and, despite what they might say, doing nothing for aged care in this country.

As we've heard already, just prior to the year's budget we had the health minister parading out in front of cameras, telling us how the government were going to look after elderly Australians. In the doorstop on 6 May, he said, 'It's going to be a very good budget for health and for aged care in particular.' As someone who represents a large and diverse community, when I heard that statement, I was looking forward to seeing real reform and, more importantly, real funding to deal with seniors and the difficulties that I've come across in my electorate in accessing aged care. I know members opposite have also had constituents, loved ones and families contact their electorate offices across Australia to complain, to worry anxiously, about whether their loved one—their parent, grandparent, husband, wife or partner—would have access to an aged-care place. Hearing that statement from the minister, I was heartened to think that the government had heard that message. We've all known about it; we've heard it day-in, day-out. But what is the minister's idea of a good budget for aged care? If he thinks no new funding is a good budget, I would hate to see what a bad budget looks like. Around the same time as the health minister was bragging about the so-called good budget for aged care, there were also big figures leaked to the media, including the astronomical figure of a supposed $100 billion of new money for aged care. On closer inspection, it became evident that this was also not an increase in funding across the forward estimates. In fact, there was no new money.

Speaking to the finer points of the Aged Care (Single Quality Framework) Reform Bill 2018, the bill is a result of the Review of national aged care quality regulatory processes, also known as the Carnell-Paterson review, which was handed to government on 25 October 2017 with a focus on quality care. The review made 10 recommendations, one of which was to establish an independent aged-care quality and safety commission. The government adopted this recommendation back in April this year but is yet to provide details in relation to this new quality and safety agency. On this side of the House, we welcomed the announcement by the government, but we are concerned that the government has not given consideration to the delivery of care across multiple settings and that the minister's announcement seemed to be very focused on those providers delivering care in a residential aged-care environment as opposed to elderly Australians who choose to receive care in their own home.

I thought to myself: 'Why is this the case? Why would the government be more focused on residential aged care than home based care?' I can tell you why. It is because, under the Turnbull government, there are over 100,000 elderly Australians who are on the wait list to receive appropriate aged home care. These numbers are startling. Included in this figure of 100,000 elderly seniors, there are more than 300 seniors who have waited more than two years for their approved home care package, without any care whatsoever. But it doesn't stop there. There are a further 6,336 older Australians who currently have no care at all and have waited for care for more than a year. On top of the 100,000-strong wait list for appropriate home care packages, the latest figures show that the waiting list grew by more than 20,000 between 1 July and December 2017 and is likely to continuing growing without the release of more packages.

Those opposite have said that the funding for home care packages that they are delivering is somehow looking after elderly Australians—but this is nothing more than a sham. In the budget we found that those opposite had funded just 14,000 new home aged-care packages over four years, which amounts, as the shadow minister has said, to nothing more than a cruel hoax. That equates to a mere 3½ thousand places per year, which isn't even enough to keep pace with demand. As I just mentioned, we know that the waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017 alone, and the government's response is to allocate 16,500 packages short of what is required. What on earth is the sense in that? To put this into perspective, in my community, in the electorate of Oxley, that will mean just 23 extra home aged-care packages per year for the next four years for elderly Australians in my community—23 each year over the next four years.

Listening to the minister, he thinks that is a suitable and, more importantly, acceptable solution, but somehow wants to be congratulated for it. He somehow wants to be acknowledged that this government is doing something to deal with this crisis. What a sham! When it comes to aged care in this country, we should be doing all that we can to respect and look after those Australians who have worked hard and built this country over the last 50 and 60 years. These people laid the economic foundation for the prosperity we enjoy today, and the government should be doing more.

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