James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the creation of the Office of the Inspector-General of Aged Care. In particular, I hope the inspector-general will have the ability to oversee the accuracy of the implementation of government policies that were announced in the election. From my point of view, I really do look forward to the inspector-general having a look at those policy documents—those bold claims that were made during the campaign, about pay rises of 15 per cent and 24/7 nursing in all aged-care facilities—and whether or not the government are accurately reflecting what they said in the campaign, now that they've got the opportunity to implement that as a government.

What Labor said they'd do about the wage rise, in particular, is something I hope the inspector-general has a good look at. I certainly saw in my electorate and throughout the country—I'm sure it was the same—that they were going to give a 15 per cent increase to the aged-care workforce. So you would expect that, when the government put in their submission to the Fair Work Commission about wage increases for the aged-care workforce, that would have been the submission they put in. It's a fairly straightforward policy position to implement: if you're elected, when you come into government you correspond with the Fair Work Commission and you put in a submission saying: 'We would like to see the aged-care workforce get a 15 per cent increase in their wages.' What happened? Well, regrettably not that. What we instead saw was that the government adjusted that policy position, so when they said it was going to be a 15 per cent wage increase, the submission that the government ended up putting in was something quite different, quite clarified. It became a 10 per cent submission for 1 July 2023 and then the further five per cent by 1 July 2024.

I do not know who writes the Labor Party's policy documents but this person needs to learn about the power of the asterisk, because when they are writing these policy documents they need to add in these clarifications that they leave out of them that are very relevant for people to understand when they're casting their ballots. The Labor Party policy position on this needed to have an asterisk next to that 15 per cent, and it needed to say in the footnote: 'But what we really mean here is 10 per cent and then another five per cent.' Don't forget, of course, that 15 per cent was in an environment of dramatically lower inflation than we have since had in the intervening period between when the policy commitment was made and when the government made their submissions to the Fair Work Commission. The 10 per cent—which was 15 per cent during the election campaign; in a dramatically lower environment of inflation—would've really turned out, if the government had got their way, and thankfully the Fair Work Commission didn't fall for that trickery, to have effectively been a real wage increase in 2023 of about two per cent. In the campaign the government said they wanted to increase wages in the aged-care workforce by 15 per cent. When they were then elected and had the chance to implement that they were effectively submitting for a real wage increase of about two per cent for that workforce.

Thankfully, the Fair Work Commission ruled differently. They have given an interim order for a 15 per cent increase across a broader category of awards than those that the government submitted on as well, all relevant to the aged-care workforce. The policy that the government had in the campaign, that they then tried to wriggle out of through their submission to the Fair Work Commission, will indeed still be implemented at the 15 per cent rate. I welcome that, because with inflation running as hot as it is that 15 per cent is nowhere near the significance that it was meant to be when the policy commitment, that the Labor Party made and then tried to renege on once they came into government, was announced during the election campaign.

I wish the Inspector-General well in looking at that issue. I think it would be very relevant for the Inspector-General to advise the government on the need to be honest with the aged-care workforce, not tell them one thing in an election campaign and then submit something totally different when you come into government. The excuse for that, of course, was the deteriorating fiscal situation. So we've now got a government saying: 'We don't believe in wage increases necessarily if the fiscal situation changes.' I don't remember that in the fine print in the election campaign either. I don't remember them saying: 'Well, we'll give you a 15 per cent wage increase unless the fiscal situation deteriorates and then we won't.' That wasn't on any billboards or part of any slogans or on any television commercials. My advice to the government is to brief their ad agency on that additional wording into the future when they are making those commitments. If they could just make them honestly with full disclosure and make sure that the slogans reflect what they're actually going to do when they get elected.

The second one, of course, was quite significant. It was the 24/7 nursing care in all aged-care facilities, which we're now told won't be happening. The Labor Party said, in the campaign, that if they were elected to government they would implement this policy of having 24/7 registered nurses in all aged-care facilities. Now that they've come into government they're now saying that won't actually be possible. I look forward to the Inspector-General having a look at that, because, again, I didn't see on the billboards or on the television commercials any sort of caveat on that policy position about permanent, constant nurses 24/7 in aged-care facilities. I think that the Inspector-General would do well to look into that, to look at why it is that the government said in the campaign that they would implement that policy position and are now saying that they won't. It will be quite a revelation to understand what has changed from the government's point of view, what new information has come along.

There's no new information that I'm aware of around the challenges of implementing that policy. When the coalition was in government, we pointed out all the challenges that this government is now using as excuses for not implementing that policy. I think it would be good to see the Inspector-General get to the bottom of that as well. It would be very interesting to know why those opposite said things around wage rises and permanent nursing staff for the purpose of winning votes. They made those solemn promises, and people chose to believe them, which is a reasonable position for the Australian people to take. When a political party says, 'Vote for us and we'll increase wages for the aged-care workforce by 15 per cent, and we'll put in place 24/7 nursing care,' it's a reasonable proposition that, in some cases, people voted for them because they believed that's what they would actually do, but now they've found it's not happening. That is very regrettable, and there would be a lot of people out there who would feel extremely misled by the government around that.

The Inspector-General might do well to have a look at some of those issues, and whoever he or she may be can report back to this parliament. This legislation does provide for this independent mechanism, which we strongly support, to look at the system as a whole, to look at a range of different elements of how the aged-care system works and to provide advice to the executive of government and to the parliament. It was obviously a recommendation from the royal commission. I commend the former coalition government, which I was very proud to be a part of, for instigating that royal commission and bringing forward recommendations like this, which we are now in the process of implementing.

I think all of us in this House are very touched and impacted by the importance of the aged-care system, both as members of parliament and as merely human beings with family members. I would expect that, at some point, everyone in this chamber has had a family member that has had interaction with, and needed the support and care of, the aged-care system. My last surviving grandparent is currently in an aged-care facility, and he is getting an excellent standard of care. We are very grateful as a family for the fact that the aged-care facility he is in is doing an excellent job and providing him with care in these final stages of his life. With the challenges that have been thrown at the system, particularly around the COVID-19 pandemic, our family's experience has been that they have done an excellent job in some very difficult circumstances in the last few years.

As a member of parliament, like all others in this chamber, I regularly visit aged-care facilities in my electorate and meet with the leadership and management of those facilities and the people that are running system-wide aged-care networks in my home city of Adelaide and home state of South Australia. I'm sure we all share a very common objective of making sure that our aged-care system provides the highest standard of care for people in their last stages of life. It should be like at any stage of life—one where the greatest amount of support and comfort that is possible is provided.

Obviously, the royal commission was very confronting and had some very concerning revelations, but we are grateful for the fact that we have had that process and we can therefore engage with the recommendations to improve the system. Of course, reform in this area is very complex. We know the two royal commissioners did not completely agree on all of the recommendations that were provided through that royal commission process. We had some that were from one royal commissioner and some different perspectives in that same topic area from another royal commissioner. We respect that it is an extremely challenging area.

I just want to conclude by making some comments about the workforce, because I think this is becoming a very consistent, significant challenge in the care sector more broadly. I very respectfully say that I hope that people in the care sector know that, when we talk about the overarching care sector, we completely understand and respect that it is not fair to suggest that people working in the aged-care system are completely interchangeable or have exactly the same type of skill set and requirements as those in the disability sector or the healthcare sector or the childcare sector. There is very specific training and there are very specific talents that people have for the roles they perform. I don't in any way try and clump those people together and suggest that, if you work in a childcare centre, your skills and your capacities are pretty much similar to those of someone that works in an aged-care facility, because that's of course not the case whatsoever. But the commonality between these different roles within the care sector is that they've all got enormous workforce challenges and workforce shortages. These are particularly acute in regional and rural and remote areas.

I think it would make a lot of sense for us to have an integrated workforce plan. There is a consistency of the challenge across the aged care, disability care, health care and child care sectors. They are all sectors that have frightening workforce projection gaps between what the demand is—even currently, let alone going into the future—and what the supply looks like. I think we need to be very nimble and very broad in the way we which look for solutions, which are going to have a lot of elements to them. There is some complexity, and they're going to need an enormous amount of financial support to make sure that we are investing in building a workforce that is going to meet that demand.

It is absolutely not acceptable for us not to have a plan to make sure we deliver the standard of care that Australians deserve, whether they're in the aged-care sector, the healthcare sector, the disability sector or the childcare sector, whatever it might be. Even in education, in the teaching profession, these shortages are challenges. It is just unacceptable for us not to have a plan in place to ensure we have the workforce necessary to provide the highest standard of care for people that need it from those systems that we fund as a government. That is vitally important. It is becoming quite frightening to look at the outlook across all those various elements of care in our society, in our communities. So I urge the government to bring forward something of great substance and robustness and depth in this area of policy, in workforce planning in those areas, and to look for a variety of solutions that ensure that we can take that graph, which is diverging dramatically, and bring it back together so that demand and supply are meeting each other well into the future.

With those comments, again, I commend the work of the members of the royal commission. This measure is a recommendation of the royal commission. We in the coalition committed to implementing this after the royal commission's recommendations were provided to government, and we very happily support this bill progressing through the parliament. I commend the legislation to the House.

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