Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill, the Aged Care Amendment (Movement of Provisionally Allocated Places) Bill 2019. It is such an important part of the responsibility we have as a parliament to make sure that those who have reached their latter years are treated with respect and dignity. What was really disappointing to see on today's speakers list though was that there is nobody on the other side, nobody in government, choosing to step up and share their views about not just this piece of legislation but what it means to people and how important this sector is. I really just want to draw the House's attention to the fact that the only speakers on this legislation come from the opposition and the independents, because we know how vital it is that as parliamentarians we are thinking about the whole gamut of people we represent. And, like many of the speakers before me, I have a community that has an ageing population. I know we're all getting old. Mine are getting old faster, it seems. The demand for aged-care places, for quality aged care and for quality aged-care workers is really top of mind for people in my electorate of Macquarie, so I'm very grateful to have a chance to speak on this legislation.

It is really sensible that this legislation, the core bill, is about allowing a shifting of places so that it can meet need and meet demand, and I absolutely support that. I think though that you can't talk about just that without looking at what you're seeing in your own electorate around aged care. One of the things that we are seeing in the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains is an increasing pressure on the aged-care facilities, which are providing the very best quality care they can, but they're under pressure with the instrument that is used to determine how much funding they get per person: the ACFI or aged-care funding instrument.

Earlier this year, a wonderful small aged-care facility called Fitzgerald Aged Care wrote to me and wrote to the minister. I declare I have been on the board of this aged-care facility. It's a small not-for-profit community based one. It has a very long and proud history of serving the Hawkesbury community from its establishment as the Hawkesbury Benevolent Society in 1918. It celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. So this is an organisation that knows what it's doing and has been doing it for a long time. It's very small—a 39-bed organisation. 'Small but passionate' is how their chairperson, Rhonda Hawkins, describes them. 'Small but passionate about ensuring our residents have the best-living experience in our facility and that they feel respected, supported and safe.' Isn't that exactly what we would all like for our parents, our grandparents and ourselves as time goes on?

The Fitzgerald Aged Care board tells me that over the past year they have seen their government funding reduced substantially and have found it more and more challenging to maintain the high level of care and services that they strive to provide, and it's all because of changes to the aged-care funding instrument. In particular, they were a bit sceptical when the government said it hasn't made any changes to aged-care funding, because they know what they're experiencing on the ground. They have experienced cuts to their funding. That $1.2 billion that was taken out of one of this government's first budgets, which was a saving—it's a bit like the NDIS savings. You save the money because you don't spend it; that means it's not going where it's needed. That's a cut in my book.

Fitzgerald say they've found that the rules dictating eligibility for the levels of funding that people receive have been tightened so much that the actual funding they and other facilities receive has decreased significantly. As an example, they have found that the ACFI rules reduce the number of points for personal hygiene, making it much harder for a resident to qualify as high care. Put simply, it means there is less funding, so less ability for their caring staff to provide the personal care that's needed.

They also point out something that we know in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains—as anyone who has an electorate on the outskirts of a city will know—which is that you're disadvantaged compared to the urban areas in the way the funding works. We are considered to be part of a major city, but we are way out on the edge of that city, yet we are not eligible for regional care. So we're really in a no man's land of funding. It makes it harder to get the staff you need. You've got to pay more—all those sorts of things make it difficult. So I would really hope the government is listening not just to the need to reallocate places to meet need but also to the sorts of concerns that small providers are raising. They are trying really hard to maintain the highest quality of service, and we should be doing what we can to help them.

It is appropriate, as we are here on Thank You for Working in Aged Care Day, to give a real shout-out to the amazing staff who work in aged care. They definitely don't do it for the money. They do it because they really can see the difference they make to someone's life, to an elderly person's life—to the life of someone who might once have had the world at their feet but whose world has now shrunk to a very small space, whether that is in an aged-care facility or whether it's in their own home, if they are still living in their own home. A really big thank you to the nurses, the personal care staff, the people who do the laundry—I've had great conversations with staff in the laundries of aged-care facilities; they have a lot of fun in there while doing some really heavy work. Thank you to those who are cooking meals, which must seem like a constant job. And to the people who look after the grounds, whether for someone who is capable of going for a walk in those grounds or for someone looking at them through a window because that is what their world has shrunk to: a really big thank you for what you do.

In talking about aged care, it isn't possible to talk only about aged-care facilities, and this piece of legislation fits into a holistic look at aged care. Home care is the other area that has a really direct impact on what happens—on when people go into aged care, for a start. So I want to spend a few minutes speaking about home care, and I would challenge the Liberal Party and the National Party to have some empathy on this issue. I know it might seem like a big ask, and you can only pull one of these favours out every now and again, but it is a serious issue that has been vastly neglected. Imagine that your mum or dad is on the waiting list that exists for an aged-care in-home package. Maybe their health is deteriorating. Or imagine being the one who makes the decision to give up on waiting and move your loved one, who you know could stay living in their home longer if they had some support, into an aged-care facility because they just can't stay on the waiting list any longer. Or imagine you're the person who gets the letter that says, 'Your loved one has finally been given the go-ahead to get the funding for their approved aged-care package,' but the letter comes just months after the person has died. They died waiting for care that we all know they needed, care they'd been approved for. All those things are exactly what is happening to elderly people and their families throughout the electorate of Macquarie, in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury.

How has a government let this happen to people in our communities? I really don't understand how we could have got to this point. Each and every person on the opposite side of this chamber should really be ashamed of where this situation has got to. I would hope that in every party room and committee meeting they have each of those opposite is fighting tooth and nail to change this system. The fact that the government isn't addressing this problem in any way is evidence that, while we might have had an election, this is a government, like the one before it and the one before that, that really just can't be bothered to look after older members of our community. That's the only conclusion I can draw.

It isn't just aged-care packages that they have no plan for, I know. There's no plan to address climate change, there's no plan to stimulate the stagnant economy and, for goodness sake, there's no plan to be a government except to talk about Labor. After their six years of government and their re-election for another three, all I see is an addiction to playing politics, not to actually fixing the problems that really matter to the people in my electorate. Fixing the issues that everyday Australians are coming up against isn't a priority, and it comes at a real cost. For older Australians, those consequences and costs are very real. Perhaps those opposite can go back to the party room and remind everyone of a few figures. There are already more than 129,000 older Australians on a waiting list for an in-home aged-care package. That's a waiting list for something they've already been approved to receive. More than 75,000 older Australians on the list are receiving no interim package at all. According to the Department of Health, the average waiting time for a level 4 package is more than 24 months. More than 16,000 older Australians on an interim package have died waiting for their approved full package. More than 14,000 people have been forced to enter care facilities because they're unable to get access to their approved care package. They are the government's own figures, and it shows that there are more people on the home care package waiting list than there are packages in the system.

I will give you the example of Thelma. Thelma, who was then a 95-year-old from Blaxland in the Blue Mountains, living on her own, was assessed on 30 October 2018 for a home care package and was approved for a level 2 package. She was then advised that she faced a two-year wait. Yes, Thelma was told that she'd be waiting until she was 97 to get in-home support. Thelma contacted me in February this year. She was excited because she'd heard on TV that there would be a new allocation of packages. She then called the hotline to ask if she was in line for one of those and was advised that they'd already been allocated and she still had at least a 12-month wait. On her 96th birthday, in the July that has just passed, Thelma phoned them again. They said she still had up to a six-month wait. I spoke to Thelma yesterday. She is hoping that she will live to see the day that she gets her home care package, in 2020. To those opposite: I know you don't know Thelma, but maybe for a minute pretend that she was your loved one and you had the power to have her home care package implemented. Would you do it? Well, of course you would.

Everyone in this place would have a Thelma in their electorate. The fact that those opposite aren't in this place fighting for her every single day says a lot about the government and its priorities. Older Australians deserve to live with dignity and choice, and that is exactly what they are being denied.

See this speech in context