Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow the Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services. I place on record my thanks for her support for carers that she's been very diligent in providing. It is a shame that the Prime Minister didn't see the value in all the work she has done. So I want to thank her.

Day after day we are seeing money being ripped out of the hands of the most vulnerable Australians. There are almost 2.7 million carers in Australia who give up their time, energy and resources to assist family members, as you, Deputy Speaker Andrews, and I very well know through all the work that we do together on the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. They support people in their families who are living with a disability, who have a long-term health condition, who are terminally ill, who are mentally unwell or who are drug-dependent.

People become carers in many different ways. For some people it's a gradual process, while others can find themselves taking on this huge responsibility much more suddenly. It's a shame this government didn't bring this issue forward months ago. If they were actually serious about supporting our carers, they would have; but we know for a fact that they are not. Instead, what we are seeing is the Prime Minister forcing Australia's hardworking carers to wait in the dark.

There are just under a million carers in New South Wales, and 2,000 of them are young carers under the age of 25. In my electorate of Lindsay, there are around 15,000 carers. That's about 10 per cent of my entire community. The carers in my community, I think, deserve better than what is being served up. It takes a very, very special person to become a carer. The work they do is not easy, and I thank them. The legislation before us today, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payments for Carers) Bill 2018, introduces a family income test of $250,000 a year for the carer allowance and the carer allowance (child) healthcare card from 20 September 2018. Carers' payments have not previously been income tested, and the proposed income test is fixed and will not be indexed. We support this change because it will mean that the vast majority of Australian carers will be able to access more and better support, if the government does what it's promising.

According to a report by Deloitte Access Economics, The economic value of informal care in Australia in 2015, unpaid carers provided 1.9 billion hours of unpaid care in that year alone. The Deloitte report also states that the replacement value of unpaid care to the Australian economy in 2015 was $60.3 billion. I think that everybody in this place would unanimously agree that, if we had to put that on the government's purse, we simply could not afford it. The value we place on carers doing paid or unpaid caring work is simply not enough. Informal carers cover a wide range of assistance activities such as personal care, transport, medical care and meals assistance. That means, across Australia, informal carers save the Australian government $60 billion, and we need to make sure that we are supporting them. Informal carers are usually people close to the person who are sacrificing their time, their energy, their money and, sometimes, their careers. It is crucial that this government understands the mental and material consequences of this massive responsibility. To say it is a self-sacrificing job is an understatement.

The ABS most recently undertook a study of disability, ageing and carers in 2015. Information about carers is an important component of that survey. It found that the information collected provided an insight into the many different characteristics of carers and how caring impacts their lives. In 2015, almost 2.7 million Australians, or 11.6 per cent, were carers, with 856,100 people aged 15 years and over identified as primary carers. The ABS survey also found, in that same year, that the average age of a primary carer was 55 years; one-third of primary carers were living with a disability themselves; females made up the majority of carers, representing 68.1 per cent of primary carers and 55.5 per cent of all carers; and, for people aged 15 to 64 years, the labour force participation rate for primary carers and other carers was lower than for non-carers. It is estimated that each week in Australia unpaid carers spend an incredible 36 million hours in those roles. While caring can be rewarding for the carer, it can often be quite thankless through the challenges they face. For carers across Australia, the debilitating financial stress of providing care is not an unfamiliar feeling—a feeling that those opposite can hardly be familiar with. The stress of financial pressures and of juggling both their own needs and the needs of their charges can often lead to serious mental health issues. Financial stresses can include extremely expensive medical bills for complex health needs as well as the inability to properly find a job with flexible hours to empathise with a carer's role.

We need to do more to ensure that carers are well supported in their quest for paid work as well as ensuring that they receive their fair share for the hard and sometimes thankless work that they do. The mental strain of being a carer can come in many different forms. From social isolation due to the high time demands of carer responsibilities to the lack of access and availability of respite, these issues can often hit home rather harder than financial stresses. I speak from my own personal experience when I say that taking on the responsibility of a carer can really turn your life upside down. It means dropping everything in order to prioritise someone else's needs above your family's and your own.

The current payments to carers by the government include the carer payment, which is an income support payment for people whose caring responsibilities prevent them from undertaking substantive paid employment; a carer allowance, which is an income supplement for people who provide daily care and attention at home to a person with a disability or a severe medical condition; the child disability assistance payment, which is an annual payment for carer allowance recipients who care for a child under 16 years with a disability; and the carer adjustment payment, which is a one-off financial assistance to families in exceptional circumstances who do not qualify for other government income support payments. The carer supplement is paid to recipients of the carer allowance for each person they care for.

As at December 2017, there were just under 615,000 recipients of the carer allowance, just under 17,000 recipients of carer allowance with a child healthcare card only and 270,000 recipients of carer payment. The carer allowance is a fortnightly supplementary payment of $127.10, which is hardly a lot of money, to help people who care daily for someone who is sick, frail aged or has a disability, to meet their costs of caring. The carer allowance child healthcare card can be given to children who have a medical condition or disability that requires extra care of at least 14 hours a week, which is not enough to provide their carer with eligibility for the carer allowance.

This bill anticipates that around one per cent of carer allowance recipients and healthcare card holders will be impacted adversely by these changes. In December of last year there were 5,016 recipients of the carer allowance in my electorate and 2,142 recipients of the carer payment.

I know that as a community we need to do more to support not only those who need care but also those who provide it. We need to ensure that there is better support and service provision to assist with the physical, emotional and financial wellbeing of carers. I also know that women are once again disproportionately more likely to be unpaid carers for people living with a disability. They are most likely unpaid and less likely to participate in the workforce than others who are not carers.

Labor recognises the invaluable contribution that carers make to our community. The Carer Recognition Act, which Labor introduced proudly in 2010, was for a national carer strategy and set out some practical actions with time frames and individual agency responsibilities to better protect and help our carers. As we stated, supporting carers is everyone's business, to provide carers with the rights, choices, opportunities and capabilities to participate in work, family and community life. We need to do more to strengthen awareness and understanding of the valuable role of carers and their rights as individuals.

The minister says that the savings which will be generated by this measure will be put towards paying for services to carers—services that are months and months behind schedule. Australian carers were meant to be able to benefit from the increased supports provided by the integrated carer support services from July of this year. Instead, this conservative government is making them wait three months longer and holding the commencement of the program back until October. For months we've been calling on this government to provide further details about what precisely these supports will be and when they will be available.

I'd like to make mention of one amazing carer in my electorate, Elise Webber. I've spoken about her in here a couple of times before. She is the mum of Bobby, who we affectionately term 'Bobby the Brave' after a horrific act of child abuse by his non-biological uncle. Bobby has been left with cerebral palsy, blind, spastic level 5, quadriplegic and with brain injuries which were described as catastrophic and not compatible with life. Bobby has an amazing fighting spirit, and I'm sure that he gets it from his mum. He has multiple lifelong injuries which have severely impacted the way his family are able to live their lives, including both of his sisters and his dad.

Elise cares full-time for her son, Bobby, with the most incredible attitude. She is the Lindsay 2018 Carer of the Year. She is an exemplary carer and an absolute demonstration of the kind of person we need to be supporting. She was also the recipient of the Lindsay Woman of the Year award in 2018, and I couldn't be more proud to know her.

Elise and the carers like her deserve to be treated as valuable members of our community whom we support, and should not be used as a footstool to let the responsibilities of government rest on. We'll be watching very closely to ensure that these savings are directed to exactly the location the government has promised, and that we do more to support our carers and those like Elise.

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