George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Aged care is extremely important, and it's important that we get this situation right. If we don't get it right, even following through on all the recommendations of the royal commission into aged care, what could end up happening, particularly in rural and regional communities, is that aged-care homes may be forced to shed residents, and that's one thing that I do not want to see. I don't want to see any aged-care home in my electorate or anywhere else being forced into the position because of new regulations, with their red tape requirements and ratios, where they have to go to some of their residents and say, 'Look, we now can't meet the requirements and we're going to have to tell some of you to leave in order for us to meet the requirements.' That is beyond the pale, and I will talk about that in a minute.

Firstly, about the motion at hand which talks about $630 million I've got to say that yes, there was an additional investment of $630.2 million over five years to deliver improvements in aged-care service delivery for vulnerable groups of seniors, but this is part of a $17.7 billion package of aged-care reforms—$17.7 billion that is going into aged care. It's not small beer; it's $17.7 billion going into taking care of some of our senior Australians in their days, months and years of need.

Going on to the issue of proposals in the motion before us today, proposals out of the royal commission, the ones that worry me are the requirements around ratios and the requirements around registered nurses. I know it's very politically popular to say, 'There should be a registered nurse present at all times; there should be certain nurse-to-patient ratios.' But I received a call from Marana Gardens, a not-for-profit aged-care home in my electorate last week. They would love to have additional nurses. They are offering $35 per hour and above for registered nurses to come on board. That's what they can afford, and they're not getting people. Nurses are not coming to places like Bowen to meet the need there. So, if there are requirements imposed upon them, I would say that within a year Marana Gardens will have to downsize, and that is going to cascade in and in on itself to the point of non-viability. So that $17.7 billion is just simply not going to be enough. How high is that figure going to go, and at what point is the going rubber band break because it's now financially unsustainable? These are the questions that need to be addressed, and we need to be very careful about what we're imposing upon the aged-care sector.

This will be made all the worse right now if people working in the aged-care sector who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 are forced to leave their job. It's a vexing question. I've got mixed views on it. I can understand the rational; I don't agree that anyone should be mandated to take any vaccine, but what's happening as a direct result of all of that is people are losing their jobs. I have had people in the aged-care industry in my electorate come to me to tell me that they are losing their job or have lost it as a result of this. That is happening, and these requirements are going to be more problematic for that sector if it has even fewer employees. I just say to members in this place: be very careful for what you wish for, because, if it turns out that you're going to have aged-care homes sending residents out on to the streets, that is not going to be the ideal outcome. Very quickly, there are people that are qualified to be RNs but they don't meet the English proficiency requirements. If we could relax that, we would have more RNs in these places, and I'll be putting that to the aged-care minister this week.

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