Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to outline Labor's position on the Aged Care Amendment (Movement of Provisionally Allocated Places) Bill 2019. Indeed, I've done this already once this year, but, given this appears not to be a great government priority, here we are again having another go around. The Aged Care Act 1997 is to be amended, as in its current form it does not permit a variation to the region to which residential aged-care places are provisionally allocated.

This bill will allow the Secretary to the Department of Health to allow approved providers of residential aged care to move provisionally allocated residential aged-care places from one region to another within a state or territory. We understand that the government and the Department of Health are not seeking the power to move provisionally allocated places from one state or territory to another. The bill also does not allow for the movement of any provisional allocated places to be moved outside the state or territory to which it was originally allocated.

Under this amendment, providers must demonstrate that the movement of the provisionally allocated places is in the interests of the aged-care consumers and that there is a clear need for places in the new region. This amendment seeks to ensure that residential aged care is available to those older Australians who require it as quickly as possible and appropriately allocated to address local needs. There is no financial impact of this bill, according to the government, in the proposed amendments.

Obviously, there is currently a review underway by the Department of Health and the government in relation to how residential aged-care places will be allocated into the future. We may see in future that this legislation may become redundant over time if there are any alternative proposals that emanate from this Aged Care Approvals Round review. Much of the review into the Aged Care Approvals Round is of course based upon three recommendations from the David Tune review that was tabled in the parliament back in September 2017, almost two years ago. I will watch this review with a keen interest, given the emphasis on establishing an alternative model that encourages greater consumer choice. It has been two years since the David Tune review, but of course it has been six years since the Liberals came into government. Looking back over this time, one does start to question if the Liberal government has done anything of significance to help older Australians access aged-care services and get the care they need.

Actually it's difficult to think of anything that the Liberals have done well when it comes to aged-care reform. You only have to look at some of the anniversaries that are coming up in the next few weeks and months to show the complete lack of interest the Liberals have had in this portfolio. As I've mentioned, in six years there have been four ministers, and billions have been ripped out. The aged-care system delivers services to over 1.3 million older Australians. The problem is that the government doesn't have an actual reform agenda for aged care. It has lurched from crisis to crisis—ad hoc, piecemeal little bits that it's trying to fix. Essentially it has mucked up aged care so badly in Australia that it has had to call a royal commission—a royal commission into its own aged-care system, when it has been in charge for six years. It simply is not good enough.

Then we come to the home care package waiting list. One hundred and twenty-nine thousand Australians are currently waiting for their approved home care package. Seventy-five thousand of these are waiting with no care at all, no packages. It's not good enough. Under this government, over two years, the waiting list has gone from 88,000 to 129,000 people waiting for home care packages. These are vulnerable older Australians to whom the government has said, 'Yes, you need care,' and then said, 'But we're not going to give it to you; you have to go on a waiting list; you have to wait.' My office is getting calls from around the country, on a daily basis, from older Australians, their families and their loved ones asking when and how they can get the package for which they have been approved. We're hearing stories of people who have been approved for a level 3 or level 4 package waiting over two years. It is not good enough—another failure from the government. Sadly the government's own figures show that 16,000 people have died while waiting for their approved package. Another 14,000 have had to enter residential aged care because they could no longer stay at home waiting for the care that wasn't there. We've got emergency departments with older Australians going to them, and hospital systems under crisis, because of the aged-care crisis in this country.

The government has added some additional home care packages. They've gone into the system over the last 12 to 18 months. But the waiting list for home care packages has still grown, from 88,000 to 129,000. And we're expecting data this Friday afternoon for the July quarter. How many more people have been waiting? The figure that I quoted, 129,000, is just the figure we have from the March quarter. We actually don't know how many people today are on that list. The government only acted to put more packages in because of pressure from unions, from the sector, from the media and from us. We were raising it all the time, to get the government to act, and it only did so under pressure. And what we've seen is lower level packages rather than higher level packages, which is actually where the demand is. The 40,000 packages that the government has put in are simply not enough to keep up with the demand for care. After talking to some people from the aged-care sector today, who gave a presentation at lunchtime, I know that trajectory is only going to grow. The government needs a reform plan for home care. It needs to deal with this waiting list. It cannot go on.

The wait time really is a crisis for those people who are waiting. You've got people giving up their jobs to go and care for their parents, people moving states to go and care for their parents, because the system in place is failing them and their families, under this government's watch. The government needs to respond. It's not okay to tell somebody who is in their 90s: 'You have to wait two years to get the care that you need today.' We are one of the wealthiest nations on this planet. Surely we can afford to provide care for older Australians who need it, in their 90s. Seriously, what has it come to in this country? We hear all the time that a country and a society is judged on how it treats older, vulnerable people. Well, we're failing. We're failing older Australians and we're failing their families, and we're failing them badly.

Labor have, of course, been calling on the government ever since we saw the first waiting list in the national priority queue. When we saw that it was 88,000 we predicted this would happen, and we've been calling on the government all of this time, for the last two years, to fix this problem. I was encouraged when the Prime Minister, on 7.30 last night, said the budget priority is going to be to fix the home care waiting list. Well, I hope so. It's about time, because older Australians simply cannot wait any longer.

I've met with the new minister—the fourth minister—and I did appreciate the opportunity to raise with him some interventions. There are some things the government could do today to fix this waiting list. It knows what they are; why won't it do them? Why is the government so slow to respond? The David Tune report: it's almost two years since we had it. The Carnell and Paterson report into Oakden: how long has that been sitting around? The workforce strategy is about to have its birthday—even the royal commission is about to have its birthday! How many reports with recommendations to fix the system does the government need to have before it does something serious about aged-care reform? It is not good enough in this country, in this day and age, to be where we are.

The royal commission is expected to hand down its interim report on 31 October this year. I hope we're not waiting for three or four years for the government to implement its recommendations. Given the government called this royal commission, it is my expectation—and the community's expectation, the workers' expectation and the providers' expectation—that the government will actually act on its own royal commission and do something about the recommendations as soon as it gets them. We cannot afford to wait years. Older Australians in their 90s waiting for home care or waiting for residential care cannot afford to wait more years for this government to work out how to solve the problem. It already has some answers. It already has reports. It already has recommendations from experts. Why will it not act? The government needs to answer the question about why it will not act. The government needs to be ready to respond, on or around 31 October, to this interim report. I will be putting every pressure I possibly can on the government to make sure that it does the right thing by older Australians, their carers and their families on this royal commission interim report when it comes down.

When you look at the number of reports the government has had into the system, it is staggering. We had the Law Reform Commission inquiry into elder abuse. Its report was tabled in the parliament two years ago. There were 43 recommendations, the majority of which have not been fully actioned. We still don't have a national register of powers of attorney. Where is it? How long is that going to take? Two years ago the government got this recommendation and we still don't even know when it's going to happen. We've got the David Tune report, as I said: 38 recommendations put to government, more than half of which still have not been implemented. What is the government doing? Why is this taking so long? The workforce strategy has 14 actions to address future workforce challenges and issues with the existing workforce. How many of these 14 actions have been implemented? Certainly nowhere near all of them. At my count, it's probably two. That is not okay. It is not okay to keep commissioning reports, getting recommendations on how to fix the system and then sitting on your hands for six years and doing nothing while it gets worse. That is not okay from this government. It is not okay in Australia in this day and age for this to continue.

I want to quote from Professor Paterson, who, with Kate Carnell, wrote the report into what happened in Oakden in South Australia. I know my South Australian colleague in the chamber, the member for Mayo, will be interested in this. Professor Paterson said during the hearings last month:

I'm disappointed … to learn of the slowness in implementation of the recommendations and I am left with a sense that the 10 recommendations have all been accepted in principle but the devil is in the detail and I can't help suspecting that some of them are not actually being progressed …

So not only have they not been implemented; some of them are not even being progressed. These are into the terrible situation that happened at Oakden. Ten recommendations—surely the government can do better than this? We're two years down the track. I mean, really? How long is this going to take? Those people currently in the system—older Australians, their families and their carers—are getting desperate. It's clear the government is failing them, and failing them badly. We need to ensure that older Australians, their loved ones and their carers can have some faith in the system. What we're hearing in the royal commission shows how much more needs to be done. But, as I've said, the government already has a plan and a pathway: the recommendations it already has. It's about to get the royal commission's interim recommendations. It needs to respond quickly, and it needs to actually start doing its job—the job that it was elected to do, which is to govern for all Australians, including those older Australians who need care at home or residential care in a residential aged-care facility. This cannot go on. It cannot go on.

For such a long time, unions, workers, the aged-care sector, providers, consumers, family, the media and we on this side of the parliament have all been calling for further reform in aged care. We've even offered to work with the government in a bipartisan way to try and fix the system. Every time we offer, the government goes, 'Yes, that sounds good,' and then does nothing. I'm not going to sit idly by and do nothing while the government sits on its hands and does nothing. I'm going to keep raising this in every forum I can. I'm going to keep putting pressure on the government every single day that I can to make sure that it gets off its hands and gets up and actually starts to respond to some of these reports, that it responds to the royal commission and that it does better. It really does need to do better.

I've outlined some of the issues in the current aged-care system. Today is actually Thank You For Working In Aged Care Day. Today I want to say to all those people working in the aged-care sector—the cleaners, the gardeners, the personal-care workers, the nurses, the physiotherapists, the dietitians, the pharmacists, the visiting GPs, the managers, the admin staff and everybody that works in the system—the system is only being held together because you're so passionate about it. I know that you're desperate for more recognition and more staff, and the government needs to deliver that. I know that the only reason the aged-care system is still functioning is because of your hard work and your compassion as a worker in the sector. We say thank you to you today and every day for the important work that you do caring for vulnerable older Australians, their families and their loved ones. In conclusion, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the Government’s continued mismanagement of aged care reform".

See this speech in context