Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I come here today not to praise aged care but to bury it. This motion by my good friend the member for Fairfax goes a long way to expressing the challenges that our nation faces. Everyone else in this debate has noted that our population is ageing rapidly and our capacity as a community to pay for this ageing cohort's health will also become increasingly difficult to fund as the number of people who are of working age proportionately decreases. Increasingly, as a community, we are asking people to fund their own care into old age. In return, the least we can do is to ensure that the quality of the care is improving, of good quality, and reliably so.

Both parties, I believe, come to this debate largely with clean hands. Previous Liberal ministers such as the member for Menzies and the member for Pearce were both pathfinders when it comes to aged care. The sector still considers both of them to have been the best of the best. They've both instituted a policy framework that got out of the way where it could and emphasised the importance of delivering reliable and quality care, but otherwise allowed providers the maximum flexibility to provide care that fitted the needs of our community. This allowed private providers to come into the sector and massively improve both the quality and range of care as well as the level of aesthetics that a resident and their family could expect. When I first started working in aged care, in 2004, I still remember walking into the UnitingCare nursing home at Croydon and being overcome with the stench of urine. This was by no means an isolated incident. I once visited a facility in Bathurst where the staff were all in the parking lot smoking as I drove in. I could not find anyone to help me and nearly all of the residents were in a cold common room watching a fish tank.

I'm glad to say that after the reforms of the members for Menzies and Pearce this has largely stopped. The massive investment by private sector operators has lifted the care and quality of aged care out of a postwar malaise in which aged care was seen as an annexe to the local hospital.

The member for Port Adelaide, Mark Butler, should also be noted in this debate. His reforms were both overdue and needed. They took the focus off form and onto substance. These reforms firmly put the focus on the care of residents first and foremost and stood up to the entrenched interests groups in the sector who have other concerns. The current minister, Ken Wyatt, who is in the chamber at the moment, has worked admirably to improve upon those changes, including massively expanding the number of unannounced audits.

This is not to say, by any means, that all is well in aged care. I want to see a more perfect system. Our work towards that will never be finished and nor should it be. However, in any consideration of how to move towards the perfect, we should emphasise those things that have worked and have provided better care for our tribal leaders. The reforms that have allowed so much private investment have massively lifted the performance of the entire sector. Consumer choice has put pressure on providers to give all the quality of care and life that they deserve in their last home. This incentive has meant that we are far more aware of when providers fall down and do not live up to our expectations.

But we should not ignore the failures. The artificial cap on bed places has meant too many Australians are forced to stay at home or else go into nursing homes that do not meet the standards that we would hope for as a community. This artificial cap on competition has brought about situations like the Oakden nursing home scandal in South Australia, in which the Butler reforms were universally ignored. The then South Australian government cared more about those working at the facility than the people they were meant to be caring for.

If the royal commission achieves nothing else, it should be this: that whatever government strictures there are on choice of our tribal elders are removed, when it comes to their final home, especially if this allows more investment; and that no government should care more about the vested interests of those working in aged care over those that they are meant to be caring for.

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