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

I too would like to thank the committee for its report and also the member for Mayo for her comments. Before entering this place, I was involved in the aged-care sector for a decade and a half, and I have to say I find criticisms of the aged-care sector in Australia at the moment quite surprising. The reason I say that is that in 2004, when I first started in the aged-care sector, the level of care that was available to older Australians was at a much, much lower level than it is now. It was in fact extremely and extraordinarily poor.

There reforms of both parties in this place—firstly, the member for Curtin, Julie Bishop, and the member for Menzies, Kevin Andrews—introduced significant and far-reaching reforms in the aged-care sector that had the impact of inviting and indeed encouraging enormous amounts of private-sector capital into the sector, which has done nothing but massively improve the level of care that our tribal elders currently enjoy. The most egregious examples of our tribal elders being abused at the hands of aged-care workers and aged-care providers come not from a private-sector firm or a not-for-profit firm but from an aged-care nursing home run by the South Australian government—the Oakden home. When after audit after audit threw up red flags about this home and its service, the South Australian government and the nurses working at that facility blocked any further investigations. You see, there is a difference between clinical care, pastoral care or other care that we want our tribal elders to have in their final years. Seeing this issue, this challenge, that we face through the prism of an industrial instrument, an industrial dispute—indeed, promoting the interests of a particular union—does not, I think, actually provide the people whom we are seeking to provide care for with any further comfort. The fact of the matter is that aged care homes do not need more nurses; they need more carers. Indeed, one of the previous speakers, one of the Labor speakers, said that it is allied health workers who are required in these homes now more than ever. The fact that we don't have nurses on call 24 hours at nursing homes is not a matter that any Australian should be concerned about—in fact, quite the opposite. What they should be concerned about is the coming deficit in carers that we will need for the baby boomer generation who are about to enter our nursing homes here in Australia.

The other issues that have been brought up are around audits and why the audits are not all unannounced audits. The reason is that many of the audits, as part of their process, check the documentation that the nursing home keeps on the level of care that it is providing to residents. Why is this important? Because there are funding models between levels 1-10. That essentially ensures how much money each nursing home receives for each resident. If a resident is assessed as having a care level of level 10 then the nursing home receives a much higher level of subsidisation from the Australian taxpayer; at level 1, a lower level. Nursing homes are incentivised by their very nature to try and increase the amount of care that a resident is getting, regardless of whether they need it or not.

It was not possible and is still not possible for people to just turn up on a Saturday night and say, 'Can I see the documentation for what level of care a person has been receiving?' That is why we have announced audits. The unannounced audits, which we commenced under this government, have been massively increased and that's why we've seen a spike in rectification reports for nursing homes across Australia. The issue that we face is that when others come into this place and say, 'Despite the fact that the aged care sector is currently receiving and will continue to receive record funding now and into the future,' what they are talking about is that they want extra payments to go to people who are ripping off the system. They want to encourage nursing homes and nursing home providers to undertake a system whereby the Australian taxpayer is subsidising rip-offs. I cannot comprehend in any way, shape or form why we think that is a good way to treat fellow Australians, because, simply put, it isn't.

Of course, all of this is taking place in the prism of what is going on with home care packages. Those opposite talk about the waiting lists for home care packages, and they're right, but you have to understand or question the value of some of those home care packages. Are they audited? Not really. What sort of care are they providing? Many Australians would be surprised to find that the vast majority of home care packages are going on services that are not necessarily dedicated to care—things like cooking, cleaning and, indeed, gardening. I think we need to have a mature and sensible debate, which hopefully will occur in the royal commission, about whether this is the best allocation of our scarce resources as a nation in helping to care for people as they get older, because there is the other truth.

I doorknock, and I know the member for Oxley does a lot of doorknocking too. I'm sure he's had the experience of knocking at a five-bedroom house where there is currently one person, often very elderly, who has now found herself—or himself, in some rare instances—trapped in her home, socially isolated from a lot of the other people in her community and a lot of her family. In some instances, we may be inadvertently making their lives worse by encouraging them to stay in their own homes. I think these are the sorts of discussions a royal commission should have and needs to have.

So, when the member for Mayo comes in here and says that most Australians will be shocked to find out that there isn't a 24-hour nurse on in a nursing home, why would they be shocked? I think they would be more shocked to find out that we are not treating a nursing home as a home but rather as some offshoot of a hospital and that we are treating people in nursing homes as though they're just some sort of outpatient. No, this is, in most cases, their last home. They deserve to be treated with dignity. They deserve to be cared for. They deserve to be looked after. Part of that is, without doubt, clinical care. But it's a very small part of it. People who come into this place and say that we need to have nurse-to-resident ratios are missing the actual, crucial point of what nursing homes do in our society. I understand that people who say we should put much more money into home care packages think they're caring, but in some cases—and I don't know how many and, hopefully, the royal commission will get to the bottom of it—they're actually making the lives of the people who they think they're helping much, much worse.

If the member for Oxley had been listening—and I know he does a lot of doorknocking. He has met people in their homes who feel that they are being trapped in their own homes and they would welcome the opportunity to be placed—

Mr Dick interjecting—

Yes, Member for Oxley, I have heard of ageing in place. Have you? Do you know what ageing in place is? Do you even know what that phrase means? It means that, when a person goes into a retirement village, they have a continuum of care. It doesn't mean that we leave the person in their own home. I take it, from your silence, that we have finally found something that I know more about than you. So I'll just enjoy this moment while it lasts. The fact of the matter is—

Honourable members interjecting—

No, the member for Oxley's right: it's not a competition. All of us should come to this place, because all of us have a proud record to speak about when it comes to aged care because all of us, over many different governments, have made massive advances in the way that our tribal elders get looked after. But just simply providing more home care packages will actually make some people worse off. We think we're caring, but we're actually hurting them, and that's why a royal commission is important, because it's easy to pick on things and say, 'Look, let's just throw more nurses at nursing homes,' when, in fact, we need more carers, or, 'Let's just throw more home care packages at people,' when, in fact, we need better nursing homes. These are the issues that the royal commission, hopefully, will get to the bottom of. This is a serious issue, and both sides need to treat it as such.

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