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

This government continues to fail older Australians. Many older Australians and their loved ones are still desperate to access care in this country. This is despite this government calling a royal commission and saying that it would implement the recommendations from that royal commission. Indeed, the very first interim recommendation—and royal commissions don't usually make interim recommendations—was to fix up the home care waitlist. And what do we have today? We have over 100,000 older Australians who have had an assessment for care, who are eligible for care, who have been deemed as needing care, who are not getting the care they need under this government.

It is shameful that, after calling for a royal commission, after pressure from the public, and after saying that they would implement the recommendations, we still have no plan from this Prime Minister about how he is going to properly fix the home care waitlist. Instead what we have seen is a bit of smoke and mirrors and a bit of marketing saying, 'Yeah; we've got this.' When you release only 10,000 packages when 110,000 people are waiting, you ain't got it at all. In fact, older Australians are still wondering when they are going to get their home care package. The Productivity Commission's recent report said that the mean wait time for somebody to access home care is now 36 months for a level 4 package. People are waiting 36 months. And we hear from this government, 'We can't do anything because of the royal commission.'

What have they done? They've ripped out billions of dollars. They've had four aged-care ministers. Over two years, 30,000 older Australians have died while waiting for their home-care package. More than 25,000 older Australians who wanted to stay at home, where it's better for them and cheaper for the government, have had to go into residential care because there weren't enough home-care packages. The transition to the Commonwealth Home Support Program, which was supposed to be integrated into home-care packages, was first supposed to happen in 2018; it was delayed to 2020 and now to 2022 because the government can't get its act together. We've got growing concerns that rural, regional and remote residential facilities are at risk of closure. We had a motion in the Senate amending a bill about transparency, and the government didn't support it. We've got workforce issues that the government has not addressed. Recommendation after recommendation, from report after report after report, is sitting on the minister's desk, still not fully implemented, including from the report on elder abuse. None of the aged-care recommendations have been fully implemented, more than 2½ years after the government got that report—2½ years! We're talking about aged care's part in elder abuse. This is just disgraceful. They clearly have no plan to deal with it.

The government keep saying, 'We can't do anything before the royal commission,' but they have done something. Just before Christmas, up on their website was a little notice:

New aged care assessment arrangements will provide streamlined consumer assessment for access to aged care services from April 2021.

They're actually going to privatise the aged-care assessment teams. It's absolutely outrageous. This is a professional workforce of almost 1,000 workers around Australia—professionals, registered nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists—who are qualified to do proper assessments of what type of care older Australians need, and what are those opposite going to do? They're going to privatise these assessments. It's not just Labor that's been critical of this. Even the Liberal health minister in New South Wales, Brad Hazzard, has come out and said:

NSW has major concerns … It seems pre-emptive and unreasonable to be effectively privatising health aged-care services while the royal commission into aged care is still underway.

When the federal minister was questioned about it he said, 'The royal commission supports us.' But, unfortunately for the minister, he was wrong. The aged-care royal commissioner had to slap the minister down and say, 'The royal commission has not at all considered what should happen to the aged-care assessment teams.' The minister was not telling the truth, something we're used to from this government, which is totally loose with the truth every single time. They pretend they're fixing home care; they haven't done it. They say they can't do anything because of the aged-care royal commission, then they privatise the aged-care assessment teams—or try to. They're under criticism for it, and they still will not prioritise and come up with a plan for dealing with the aged-care system in Australia today. It is outrageous that older Australians—100,000 of them—are still languishing on the waiting list for home care. I have raised it in this place time and time again, but it is still an issue that the government doesn't have a clear plan for.

There are many things they could do, because they actually have a whole heap of recommendations that tell them some of the things they could do. Some of them don't even cost the government very much money and could be done quite quickly and easily, in terms of the home-care waiting list. But those opposite still haven't done any of those things. They could prioritise older Australians who have a terminal illness and only a short period of time before they die. Surely those older Australians who have had that type of diagnosis deserve some care at home.

It is appalling that we're getting 93-year-olds being told they have to wait three years for their home-care package. What does the minister think is happening to these older Australians as they languish at home waiting for care? It is not good enough in Australia today for the Prime Minister to get up here and pretend everything is wonderful. We get the big marketing ad: 'How great is Australia today? How good are we?' It's not good for older Australians. It's not good for their loved ones and their families, who are trying desperately. They ring my office and the offices of the members on this side—and I'm sure they're ringing the offices of the members on that side too—to try and get some care for these older Australians. It is not good enough that they have to ring members of parliament and beg to get care for their loved ones.

Some of the stories that I and other members in this place get about older Australians would bring you to tears. There are so many personal stories. I have been fortunate to meet some of these older Australians who are at home waiting for care. Of course, we can't give them any comfort at all, because the government said it would respond to the royal commission's interim recommendations—and the first one was to fix home care—and we got 10,000 packages, but only 5,000 packages straight up in November, and there are 110,000 people on that list. So, even if the whole 10,000 packages were delivered, there would still be 100,000 older Australians waiting.

Then we have the obfuscation with not releasing data on time and dropping the data on Friday afternoons when they think nobody is looking. Then we can't get an answer to how many Australians died whilst waiting for care. You get huge obfuscation by this government when they should be trying to come up with a plan to fix aged care in Australia today. Older Australians and their loved ones can't afford to wait. Older Australians in their 90s and older Australians who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness do not have the time for this government to keep sitting on its hands. They don't have the time to deal with all the bureaucracy that this government puts in their way. Certainly they don't have the time to deal with aged-care assessment teams being privatised.

The aged-care assessment teams are actually the only part of the aged-care system that hasn't been widely criticised during the royal commission. It's probably the only part that's working well. So what's this government's great plan? 'We'll privatise that bit. We'll try to save a little bit of money here. We'll outsource it to some mates of ours'—that seems to be what happens over there. This privatisation should not go ahead. The government should stop the privatisation at least until it gets the royal commission's recommendations. As I said, it has been widely criticised. None of the states and territories are supporting this. There's a COAG meeting at the end of the month, and I'm sure that they're going to put to the minister their views about the aged-care assessment teams.

They are professional, hardworking teams who have all the qualifications to do the assessments properly. Labor, of course, are supportive of streamlining assessments for the Commonwealth Home Support Program and home-care packages, but we will not sit idly by while this government tries to privatise a workforce of at least 1,000 people, who are currently working for state and territory governments and local governments. We will not stand by while they try to do this, because it will hurt older Australians. Not only that; who is going to actually provide these assessments? They will be organisations that will then go out and provide care. What will happen is these organisations will then bid and will be doing that care.

They should not be privatising these aged-care assessment teams. Most of them are actually located in hospitals. They're dealing with some of the bed block that this government has created by not providing home-care packages, by increasing waiting lists in residential care and by increasing waiting lists in home care. The government needs to act and the government needs to do something today, particularly about home care. It said in its response to the royal commission that it would respond. Clearly it is not doing anywhere near enough when it comes to supporting older Australians at home and in residential aged care.

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