David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I wish to raise the issue of massive management and administration fees eroding the value of aged-care packages in my electorate and across the country. A constituent has written to me, stating that his wife's care provider had been charging care and package management fees totalling $510 a fortnight, or over $13,000 per year. This is just over a quarter of the total funding available under her package. Assuming that these managers cost $50 an hour, including on-costs, that amount is sufficient to pay for five hours a week of management. The balance of her package will be enough to pay for only eight hours a week of actual personal care, at the provider's current hourly rates. The provider has now, from 1 September, increased these management fees by 15 per cent, or almost $1,900 extra a year. This will further reduce—by half an hour a week—the amount of care that can be purchased.

As the aged-care royal commission revealed, this level of administration fees is common across the home-care sector. It means that the government is paying providers about $1 billion a year to manage care worth $3 billion. This needs to change. It's just another example of why we need reform of our aged-care sector, reform that only an Albanese Labor government can deliver.

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