Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As previous speakers have noted, Labor supports these bills while expressing our strong concern about the government's slow introduction of this legislation into the parliament. The purpose of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Bill is to establish the new Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission from 1 January 2019. The new commission will be tasked with helping to restore confidence in aged-care services, given widespread public concern. Whilst this concern was highlighted by last month's Four Corners report, these issues, sadly, aren't a surprise to those with loved ones in aged care or seeking aged care or those working in the aged-care sector.

Many older Australians who now need aged care have lived lives very different to mine and to many of us in this House. They grew up in the Great Depression, served in and lost loved ones in the Second World War or, in the case of many postwar migrants, experienced the hardships of war. They worked and raised families in the early postwar years without many of the things we take for granted today. Free universal health care didn't arrive until the 1970s, women earned less than men doing the same work and occupational superannuation was limited to a lucky few—mostly men—until the introduction of the superannuation guarantee in the 1990s, well after many of this generation had reached the end of their working lives. They just had to trust that there would be an adequate age pension and proper aged care to support them later in life. This is a generation who are reluctant to ask for help, even when they really need it, and are even more reluctant to complain when the standard of care falls short of what it should be or what we would expect. It isn't fair that, when the circumstances of day-to-day life and caring responsibilities become too much and they need help, that help isn't there, or the quality of that help or care doesn't meet what we would want for our parents, our grandparents and loved ones.

The report of the Review of National Aged Care Quality Regulatory Processes, also known as the Carnell-Paterson review, was handed to the government on 23 October last year. It had a focus on quality care. The review made 10 recommendations, one of which was to establish the independent Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. The government has taken a long time to do the work around establishing this new commission, and it has yet to respond to a number of the other recommendations included in the Carnell-Paterson review.

The new commission will provide a single point of contact for older Australians and aged-care providers in relation to the quality of care and regulation. It will be responsible for the accreditation, assessment and monitoring of Commonwealth funded and other aged-care services, and for complaints handling. Although these bills would be considered non-controversial, there are a number concerns, particularly the time it has taken the government to introduce legislation into the parliament. The Greens have referred the bills to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry, with a reporting date of today. We on this side of the House hope the Greens' actions will not hold up the passage of this important legislation. These bills are a missed opportunity for government to give the new commission stronger arbitrary powers, given the widespread public concern.

Labor puts the government on notice that there must be no change to the cost-recovery process and/or fee charges to ensure the ongoing support for smaller providers. Although the advisory council is set to continue, the government is yet to fill three vacancies. Given the responsibility this council has, you would've thought the government would have urgently filled these vacancies. This new agency is due to begin on 1 July 2019, so the government has much work to do to get this commission right.

Given the number of times my colleagues and I have raised aged care in this House, I welcome the government's royal commission into the abuse and cover-ups in aged care, but the government can't wait for the royal commission to report. Older Australians need action now. Labor has been saying for a long time that the aged-care system is in crisis. When the Leader of the Opposition said this in the parliament in May, the government likened it to elder abuse. We are relieved that the government is now listening and has changed its mind. The quality standards and reporting system isn't working. There aren't enough aged-care workers, and they aren't given proper pay, respect or support to do the work they do helping others.

Last year I received a sad letter, which goes to the heart of this matter, from a constituent, Heather, regarding the standard of care her husband, Reg, received in residential care in my electorate. Heather told me that Reg entered respite at the facility in May 2017 and passed away just 7½ weeks later. When Reg was first admitted, he was well, mobile and cheerful. He had some health problems, but they were managed. His placement was due to his dementia. Heather was finding it increasingly difficult and exhausting to look after him at home and needed a break. One morning Heather arrived at the facility to find Reg in discomfort and pain. Reg was in the same position that he'd been in when she had left him the day before. She called the ambulance herself. When they arrived to take him to hospital, the officers noted that Reg had been lying in a bed of stale urine. Upon admission to hospital, Heather was told that Reg was very sick. He had septicaemia from a stage 4 bedsore. The care and treatment Reg then received while in hospital was professional and respectful, exactly what he should've received at the facility but did not. Unfortunately, the septicaemia did not respond to antibiotics, and Reg passed away four days after admission. His death certificate stated the cause of death as sepsis from bedsores.

As Heather said, this should not have happened. The royal commission needs to examine the impact of the government's years of cuts. You don't fix aged care by cutting the funding to aged care. Billions of dollars have been cut from aged care in the last five years. The now Prime Minister cut almost $2 billion in his first year as Treasurer. With three ministers in five years and billions of dollars in cuts, the government has ignored dozens of its own reports and reviews on what is needed to fix the problems we do know about in aged care.

I'll now turn to home care packages. There are now 121,000 people on the home care package waiting list, including 95,000 people with high needs, many living with dementia. I have raised a number of examples of the impact of this waiting list on my constituents in this place. There are 774 people on the Central Coast in the queue, almost two-thirds of whom are waiting for high-level packages. These are people like Gladys, who requires in-home care. She applied for support through My Aged Care a year ago and was approved for a level 2 package, but she is still in the queue a year later. Her daughter Robyn works full-time and helps as much as she can, but since she has been waiting her mother has had four falls, the most recent of which fractured her wrist, further limiting her mobility. Gladys is in desperate need of extra assistance around the house and with personal care.

I wrote to the minister about Gladys. I do appreciate his assistance, but his response was for the family to call My Aged Care for regular updates. She has had four falls whilst in the queue!

When he suggests that people are 'entering' and 'exiting' the queue on a daily basis, sadly we know what that means. Older people are dying before they access an aged-care package.

The royal commission should also look at the difficulty older Australians have—and their family members have when trying to assist them—in navigating My Aged Care. It's complex and it's difficult, and for someone in crisis it can sometimes just be too hard. Patricia, from my electorate, entered residential aged care in September last year. It was a crisis, as many of these admissions are. She had been living at home with a family member whose own health problems had become overwhelming, and they could no longer care for her, despite wanting to. Unfortunately, the original income-and-asset summary provided to the aged-care facility by the Department of Human Services incorrectly included the house as an asset, but this was later changed to exempt the home for two years on account of her family member, a disability pensioner, living in the home. What followed was an administrative nightmare.

Because the original assessment cannot be re-issued, the aged-care facility charged an accommodation levy that should not apply, and Patricia's life savings were taken in fees—incorrectly taken in fees. Her daughter has faced nearly a year of fighting the facility and the department to have the error fixed. Even with the assistance of my office, nearly five months passed before the issue was resolved, and again I'm grateful to the minister for the assistance of his office in this case. No-one really wants to put their loved one into residential care, and families like Patricia's need support in order to do so. They don't need months and years of distress because the system is broken and doesn't work. We can't call ourselves a fair and generous country until older Australians have the love, care and respect they deserve.

As a pharmacist who worked at Wyong Hospital in my electorate for almost a decade, I'm a proud member of the Health Services Union, and I strongly support their Our Turn to Care campaign for better conditions for aged-care workers and the people that they care for. As part of the campaign, the HSU surveyed over 300 of its members. The survey showed that the No. 1 concern of workers, above remuneration, is short-staffing. They said:

You've normally got two staff to 35 people including those with chronic needs and palliative care. You're pushed with work, you can't fulfil all your duties in the 7.5 hours. It's not fair on the workers [or] the residents.

These are common concerns. These were concerns expressed when I held an aged-care roundtable with Labor's Medicare taskforce, with Dr Mike Freelander and Sharon Claydon, the member for Newcastle. One of the things that particularly struck me and stayed with me from that forum was an older person who was at the roundtable, representing people who were members of a local group for older people. She wasn't at the time looking for care herself, and nor was she seeking care for someone else. But during the roundtable she said that the stories that other people had shared had left her terrified. One thing we need to be very, very mindful of is the impact that this has on older Australians and their families and those who look after them—the fear that they have of entering aged care because of some of the stories and some of the things that have happened.

I was proud to stand with my community at the rally at Central Coast Leagues Club recently on the Central Coast to call for more funding and better pay and conditions for aged-care workers. The Secretary of the HSU, Gerard Hayes, told the rally, 'We are creating an existence for older Australians, not a life.' This is just not good enough. Older Australians are at the time of their life where they need care, where they need residential care or they need respite care or they need a home care package, but the support just isn't there.

In February this year, I lost my father, who had lived with younger onset dementia. I am very grateful for the care that my father received, both respite care and in-home care. There were many things that my dad and his friends experienced, and I do want to mention the YODSS group—the Younger Onset Dementia Social Support Club. A lot of people are aware of dementia, but they're not necessarily aware of younger people living with dementia. They have particular needs that must be looked at and must be properly funded. Their partners are often working people who are trying to juggle care, whether it's in-home care or respite care, whilst working. There is a particular set of circumstances and demands on families of people living with younger onset dementia. So today I do want to mention YODSS and Bev and Steve of the YODSS group on the Central Coast and the work they do to help support younger people living with dementia.

We know that one of the largest groups of people waiting for higher-level packages is people living with dementia. I particularly want to say to those in my community that we on this side of the House are working as hard as we can to make sure that you get the care that you need when you need it. Carers often need help, particularly in crisis, and there is an urgency that this government doesn't seem to understand or hasn't really heard. I call on everybody in this House to work towards better-quality aged care so that people and families seeking care or in care have the confidence and assurance to know that their grandparent, their parent, their loved one is receiving the care that any of us would ask for for someone that we love and care for.

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