Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I never get angry; sometimes I get upset, though. Payments of this nature have not previously been income tested, and this bill now aims to implement a fixed family income test of $250,000 a year. To the majority of families in my community, $250,000 is a relatively high family income. In fact, the median income for residents in my electorate of Macarthur is under $50,000, and 21 per cent of families have a family income of less than $21,000. Based on data from the latter part of 2017, roughly 6½ thousand Macarthur locals are in receipt of the carer allowance. Of those 6½ thousand, an additional 230 receive the associated healthcare card and just over 3,000 are able to get the carer payment.

It goes without saying—but I think we need to point out the fact—that being a carer is very expensive. Being a carer often means one partner giving up their job. It's costly in terms of monetary value but also in terms of social capital. It means maybe never going on a holiday. If you have a child who's wheelchair-dependent with cerebral palsy or a congenital abnormality like spina bifida, it's sometimes very difficult, even in this modern world, to travel far, and many accommodation areas are not geared up to cater for children with severe disabilities. It's also important to understand that the carer allowance is not a huge amount of money. As we speak, it's about $127 a fortnight. That doesn't go very far when you're looking after a child who may be incontinent. The larger nappies are extremely expensive, running into hundreds of dollars a month, and often they're not subsidised.

The healthcare card is also provided for children who have a severe medical condition or a disability, and that can be very useful because many of these children are on large numbers of medications—for epilepsy; sometimes for muscle spasms, in the case of cerebral palsy; sometimes, for gastrointestinal disorders, some children require special feeds and special formulas—and this is very expensive, and the healthcare card is an enormous help.

These changes to the carer allowance will affect a very small number of people—in fact, less than one per cent of carer allowance recipients and healthcare card holders—and this is why we are agreeing to this bill. However, it is clear to me that we do need to do more. The amount that carers contribute to our society runs into billions of dollars. They play a vital role in providing care for people who may well otherwise require hospital or nursing-home care.

Based on a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics survey, it is estimated that about 2.7 million Australians are performing the role of carer and go pretty much unpaid. The carer's part in our society is invaluable. The replacement value of carers in our society has been estimated to run at close to $60 billion. Statistics have already been mentioned about the number of hours of unpaid care provided by carers, and it would be almost impossible for our medical or social support services to cope if a significant number of our carers stopped caring. We know they won't, because caring is in their nature. I've been blessed in my career to meet some really wonderful carers who have looked after their child or relative selflessly for many, many years.

That's why I was so pleased with the rollout of the NDIS. One issue that was always a constant worry for parents who have a child with a severe disability, as they got older and may become less able to look after their severely disabled child, was where the certainty of care was going to come from. That's a really huge issue that the NDIS, which had bipartisan support, has addressed. The relief for these families is almost palpable. To know a child—for example, a child with Down syndrome—is going to be able to be cared for once their parents are gone is amazing. Whilst we have criticised some factors in the NDIS rollout, this has certainly made a huge difference to many of the families I see, and I am very grateful for it.

I want to see, however, more investment in supporting carers. We need to have a better respite care system. It's physically exhausting sometimes to look after a child, adolescent or adult with some of the more severe forms of disability. Things like lifting them, bathing them, showering them and feeding them are very physically tiring, and many of the carers I see have orthopaedic injuries, back injuries or arthritis from the constant trauma of looking after people with severe disabilities. The love that they give their disabled relative only goes so far. The physical demands are very difficult. We need to be doing more to support them. Respite care is an issue, certainly, as is home modification. I've seen parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars modifying their homes to deal with a wheelchair-dependent relative. We need to be providing better services to help people do things like physically modify their homes or even get a bit of a break every now and again so they can go on holidays. Some of the families I see haven't been on a holiday in 30 years, which really is something that we should be helping with.

We in Labor will certainly hold the government to account to make sure these changes are reflected in improved payments and improved resources for carers. As I've mentioned, waiting times for some of these benefits are really a major issue, and I would encourage the government to do what it can to reduce the waiting times for Centrelink benefits and, in particular, make communication with Centrelink much better for some of the very stressed families that I see. The government owes it to Australian carers to be diligent in providing support and services. If the government intended to be serious in its duty to support carers, it would have brought this program forward many months ago. Instead it opted to force Australia's hardworking unpaid carers to wait in the dark, concerned about what was going to happen.

I remain very concerned that little is known about the new integrated carer support services. The fact that commencement has been pushed back suggests to me the government also knows very little about it. We owe it to our carers. I owe it to the carers of the patients I've looked after for many years. They are selfless and have not been particularly demanding, and yet they do a job that many would fail at. (Time expired)

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