Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak on the motion moved by the member for Macquarie, which notes the Morrison government's appalling response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. The royal commission handed down its interim report on 31 October 2019. The report was titled, quite simply, Neglect. A simple word at the top of a massive iceberg. The commissioner made three recommendations in that report requiring urgent action. One of the urgent recommendations was to ensure older Australians are getting the care at home when they need it most. The government's response to that recommendation was to allocate 10,000 home care packages and only 5,500 for the first year. This limp-lettuce response was despite there being more than 100,000 older Australians waiting for their already approved home care packages. Merely 5,500 in the first year is worse than woeful. It's actually a disgrace. Sadly, almost 30,000 older Australians died over the past two years while waiting for their approved home care packages and 25,000 older Australians entered residential aged care prematurely over the past two years because they could not access their approved home care packages.

The Productivity Commission's report on government services released in January this year revealed that older Australians are waiting almost three years for their approved high-level home care packages. The Liberals have been asleep at the wheel for six years and now they're well into their seventh year. There have been four different aged care ministers in that time and billions of dollars has been ripped out of the system, while Australia's aged care has lurched from one deep crisis to another. The current Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians let slip in the Senate a couple of weeks ago that he had not actually read the royal commission's interim report. He admitted he hadn't seen a statistic that appeared on page 7 of the interim report's foreword—that's the responsible minister.

Older Australians desperate for care are being forced to abandon calls for help to the My Aged Care portal. This supposed golden gateway has turned out to be more like a black hole. Over the last three years, more than 110,000 calls for help went unanswered by the My Aged Care call centre. This is a massive failure on the part of the Morrison government. The My Aged Care portal is the key entry point for older Australians waiting to access aged care at home or in permanent care. It is totally unacceptable that older Australians can't use My Aged Care. The Morrison government is asleep at the wheel and older Australians are again paying the price.

The only plan this hapless government actually had for aged care was to privatise the assessment of aged care services, an ill-conceived idea right from the beginning that I would suggest involved winding down services so they could sell it off and actually stop the flow of people going into aged care and the hit on the budget. In January, the aged care royal commissioners issued an extraordinary public correction in response to the false assertion of the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians that the commission supported the plan to privatise aged care assessments. What a slap down. Last week, one of the government's own MPs, in a speech in parliament, rubbished their plan to privatise aged care assessments. After state and territory governments also panned the plan, the government finally walked away from their ill-thought-out privatisation plan.

The Morrison government needs to reassure older Australians that the important work of assessment in aged care will continue to be done by experienced and well-qualified assessors, in conjunction with the states and territories. This is what older Australians deserve. The Morrison government is just not committed to looking after vulnerable older Australians. Forget the spin. Look at what they have actually done, look at their actions and look at their funding.

In June 2017, the Australian Law Reform Commission released a landmark report into elder abuse. None of the 14 recommendations from that report that related to aged care have been fully implemented. This is another shocking failure. Figures released last year showed that there were 5,233 assaults in residential aged care in just one year. That was an 80 per cent increase over the last two years, on the coalition's watch. Recommendations such as introducing a register of aged care staff have been left sitting on the minister's shelf collecting dust. So, an aged care worker could be dismissed at one nursing home and then go down the street and mistreat another older Australian, but the employer wouldn't know. Acting on the ALRC recommendations would make vulnerable Australians in aged care safer.

The Morrison government must do its day job. It must stop the scourge of elder abuse. Older Australians and their families cannot afford the wait any longer. How can we trust the Morrison government to respond to the royal commission into aged care when they still haven't implemented important recommendations from an ALRC report from almost three years ago?

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