Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to support this motion on aged care because this government must be held to account for its handling of the issue of home care packages and aged care in general. As this motion outlines, the coalition government have let 129,000 older Australians languish whilst waiting for the approved level of home care package. This crisis is getting worse. It seems the government has no idea what it means to watch an elderly parent wait in vain for assistance at home. It has no idea what it means for a family to struggle to provide that care, juggling work, juggling rosters and jugging care for their children.

Families are taking risks, ultimately, because sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you want it to. And then you worry desperately because you can't get home on time, because an elderly loved one is home all alone just for that bit too long, because they didn't get a shower, because they missed their midday medications or because they didn't eat their lunch. You worry that the post-it notes you put out to remind them to take their pills, turn off the gas or to put the heating on might have fallen away, or been pulled down or missed.

New government figures show that almost 30,000 older Australians died or were forced into an aged-care home last year while waiting for their home care packages. I read a particularly harrowing account published in The West Australian by Gemma Tognini, who wrote:

After nearly two years of waiting, the funding for my dad's Federally allocated home-care support package finally arrived, last week.

The letter came on Tuesday. The day after his funeral. Dad died waiting.

This is an experience shared by too many.

It's not just home care that is failing. The royal commission and the sudden evacuation of the Earle Haven Retirement Village on the Gold Coast highlight the inadequacies of some residential aged-care facilities. In the case of Earle Haven, 70 elderly, frail people, in some cases with dementia, were left in the lurch when the nursing home that they live in and pay fees for, and that taxpayers contribute towards, was shutdown without any notice. There are many questions to be raised about the Earle Haven Retirement Village closure. Why were medical records and medical equipment removed? Why was it so badly managed that police had to step in and relocate the patients?

The Courier- Mail reported that the global owner of aged-care contractor HelpStreet Villages, which was running the Earle Haven Retirement Village for owner Peoplecare, had been banned from managing companies by Australia's corporations watchdog because of unpaid debts. As Senator Watt has pointed out in the other chamber, Earle Haven has been repeatedly sanctioned by the government's own aged-care regulators for failing to meet safety and care standards for its residents. I think you really do have to wonder what it has got to take before some sort of serious action is taken.

How does a system from which some make a healthy profit from billions in taxpayer subsidies often show no real responsibility or accountability for care of our elderly? As a nurse and as the shadow minister for aged care, I am committed to holding the government to account for this. I want to finish on a positive, though. If there was any silver lining to the Earle Haven closure, it was the behaviour of the staff. Most of them have lost their jobs, but they turned up to care for the residents when they were being evacuated.

Next Wednesday is Aged Care Employees Day. I want to say thank you to everyone working in aged care. Being in the caring industry makes you special people. You do one of the most important jobs in the world. Your experience with people at the most vulnerable time of their lives means that you are trusted, you are dedicated, you are hard-working and you are loved. You are relied on by so many for so much. I came to this job via your pathway, from the caring industry and union movement, and I'm so glad and proud that I did. The royal commission into aged care and subsequent media attention has been tough for you. I know that. We've seen too much blame placed on aged care staff for what are systemic, long-term issues, mainly caused by funding cuts, poor management, lack of transparency and accountability and a lack of willingness by the Liberal government to tackle real reform. Aged care nurses and their unions have been screaming out for reform and resources, a call that has been completely ignored by the Liberals. I know what funding cuts mean. I know what it's like to be a carer or nurse and not to be able to deliver the care you want because there aren't the resources allowing you to do your job, because there is limited access to training and skills, and because the workloads are impossible. Thank you for everything, for hanging in there and speaking up. I hope the government listens to your experiences and your calls for funding, reform and staffing.

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