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

I obviously rise in support of this motion, but I am astounded by the contribution of the member who just spoke. What a load of rot. Seriously! All it was was more and more spin from a government that is not doing anything to fix the aged-care crisis in Australia today. The truth of the matter is they only called a royal commission because they thought Labor was going to call one in the lead up to the election and because of the ABC Four Corners stories. Prior to that, the minister said it was elder abuse to suggest that a royal commission was necessary. That is the truth of what actually occurred around the calling of the royal commission.

If the government is so proud of the ACAT services, why did it just pop them up on its website on 23 December saying, 'New aged-care assessment arrangements will provide streamlined consumer assessment for access to aged-care services from April 2021'? That was actually the government's announcement: a little statement from the Department of Health on 23 December. The reason the government didn't want to crow about this is they know that the over a thousand workers around the country who are currently delivering ACAT services, the aged-care assessment services, are highly trained, well-qualified people who know what they're doing when it comes to having these assessments of older Australians. They also know that the states and territories have these ACAT teams sometimes based in hospitals to ensure that older Australians who are in hospital can get an assessment to try and get them some services so that they can actually leave the hospital. That's what the hospital based Aged Care Assessment Teams do.

This decision by the government has been criticised by everybody. We heard from the previous speaker and we heard from the minister this touting out that the royal commission interim report said that this is what the government should do and/or that David Tune, in the Tune report, the legislated review, said that this is what the government should do. That is simply not true. It is absolutely not true. David Tune called for a streamlining of the Regional Assessment Service and the ACAT service. The government can do that without privatising the ACAT teams.

There was no discussion with the states and territories who deliver the ACAT services prior to the government putting this little statement up on its website. It's an absolute disgrace. The workers and the trained, qualified people who are delivering these services today deserve better. Older Australians, their families and their loved ones deserve better than this government putting up that little note a few days before Christmas and trying to pretend that somehow it was a recommendation, when it clearly was not. Indeed, the royal commissioners had to slap down the minister when he tried to make this claim.

The workers who deliver these services—we're talking about registered nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists—are trained people, highly skilled, doing these assessments. If they are streamlined and outsourced, what guarantee do we have that people will have the appropriate qualifications to do these assessments? Are they going to be based on the current Regional Assessment Service, the RAS? The qualification for making those assessments, because they are for the entry-level Commonwealth Home Support Program, is just a certificate II in aged care. There's a big difference between a certificate II and an occupational therapist, a physiotherapist or a registered nurse—a very big difference in qualification and skill mix.

The government needs to come clean on why it is doing this. It needs to guarantee that the qualifications of the service are still there. It should abandon its privatisation plans altogether, in our view. If not, it needs to guarantee that these workers, the qualified workers who are currently doing these assessments, are able to remain in these positions, because the states and territories need them where they are to do these assessments, to get older Australians who are currently in hospital out of hospital and going home with appropriate care. They need these services to ensure that older Australians get the assessments they need, when they need them.

We already know this government has said, 'We can't do all this stuff till after the royal commission.' But apparently they can privatise the ACAT. They can't fix all the other things like the over 100,000 people waiting for home care. They can't fix bringing together the Commonwealth Home Support Program and the home care packages. They can't do a whole range of things, they claim, until they get the recommendations of the royal commission, due in November. But they can do this, even though the royal commission has said, 'Don't do this, because we'll make a recommendation about what we think the government should do in relation to aged-care assessment teams.' The government should abandon its plans to privatise the ACAT and wait for the royal commission.

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