Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whether it be aged-care legislation or other legislation brought before the House, there's a concern for me that has emerged in the last couple of days, and it has been greatly disappointing. The member for Moreton has taken me to that place again, and I just want to put a couple of things on the record.

This bill confirms the new position of Inspector General of Aged Care and all the things that go round that. What disappoints me—from each side, not just outside—is that there has to be an attack on the other side in the process of any speech. There are actually no grounds for that. I can go back all the way to the Hawke government and to the criticisms of governments across that time over various issues. There were criticisms in regard to aged care. But remember, when we're speaking in this house, that we're speaking to everybody out there.

There are a whole lot of people who worked in aged care and were caring, responsible, engaging, loving people. They worked with people in aged-care facilities, and when they hear politicians today speaking about the failures of other politicians in the past to fulfil the needs of those in aged care, they think, 'Well, that didn't happen in my facility. What are they talking about? It must have happened in other facilities or we wouldn't have had a royal commission that had to find issues around aged care, that's for sure.' But every one of us have aged-care facilities in our constituencies. We know what's going on. We know what a great provider is. We know how people's lives are often changed, moving from their home to an aged-care facility, because we see them begin to thrive when they get the care that they need at that stage of their lives.

There have been three instances that have disappointed me in this parliament. Every time I've come into the parliament I've tried to bring in some reasonable decorum, especially in regard to the other side. I try to keep the individual out of it and talk about the policies of the government of the day, and that's expected. Has there been criticism of former governments over aged care? Yes, there has been. Have many been blown out of the water to an extreme? I will go back to when former member Bronwyn Bishop, the former Speaker and former senator, was responsible for aged care and there was an incident somewhere in Australia around a tiny bit of kerosene being put in a bath. That was beneficial, apparently, to the people who needed it. That aged-care centre having that kerosene bath became her absolute responsibility, and it was big news all over the place. It couldn't have been more disappointing.

The aged-care minister and ministers of the day are responsible for their portfolios. They can't be responsible for every individual acting in every aged-care facility across this country, especially when you know who, in my electorate alone, 99 per cent of the people working in the aged-care industry are dedicated to: their clients. It's not the highest paid job in the world. You need to be a very special person to be caring for older people. To give you some background in history, when I was first elected, the average stay in an aged-care facility was about 10 years. Now, in this day and age, the world has changed. That model of caring for people in community, born out of the bush nursing hospital, created across our country just after the war, said that, when someone was perhaps lonely, in difficulty and in need of care, they went in, possibly at an early age—sometimes under 60—and stayed in that village for a long time.

But times have changed so dramatically, and the way we care for people in their homes and the energy government puts into that means that people are not going into aged-care facilities until much later in their lives, and when they go in in the year 2023 they are far more frail than they ever were in the fifties and sixties. So governments have had to change with them. Each government that I have observed or served in had the same desire for care for people in aged-care facilities as any other government. I have heard the criticisms of the former Turnbull government, the former Morrison government and the former Abbott government today in this chamber. Those are disappointing, because each of those governments poured extra money into aged care every year. And so did the Rudd-Gillard government put extra money into aged care before that.

I can take you back to the start of the Howard government: there were reforms around aged care that cost the government greatly, politically, but which have proved to be a success over time. They were the right policies, but they were used by the opposition in the full knowledge that there's a political advantage if you strike fear and doubt into the Australian community about aged care. Who do they have in mind when issues like these around aged care come up, when we actually want to care for and make the industry viable? We call it an 'industry' now, because it is; it's a multi-multibillion dollar industry. Some are privatised, some are not-for-profit and some are quasi-not-for-profit organisations—there are churches which run aged-care facilities. They're big organisations—in fact, the smaller aged-care providers are being swallowed up where there's an advantage to the private provider.

That horse has bolted: it has gone, and governments are now under strain to keep funding up. I can remember in the last days of the Howard government that Mr Howard, the Prime Minister, asked me what I desired for my electorate and for Australia. He said to me, 'Russell, please, don't ask me for more money for aged care!' At the start, the Howard government was spending, I think, $2½ billion dollars on aged care. Then it went to six, then 12, 14 and 18. It was fortunate that the government at that time was able to fund those huge increases in aged care as our population aged. What did they want to do—your parents, my parents and those people that the member for Moreton talked about, who built this place and this country after the war; those people who committed themselves to the education of their children and to the growing of their own wealth and therefore the wealth of the nation; and those people who came here from war-torn Europe to make a new life, and so many more after them with their children to make a new life? They wanted to educate their children—that was the first thing. Even though English was their second language, they made sure their children spoke English and they made sure they got the best education they could afford for them; whether that was state, private or Catholic it didn't matter. They knew their future was through education, and it was. Those generations went on to be the doctors, solicitors and surgeons of this world. And the politicians: there's one sitting in the deputy's chair at the moment, Acting Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou.

They made great contributions. They age, and the interesting part is that when they age and go into an aged-care facility, even though they speak very good English in their older years they revert back to their old languages. They then need specific care from people who can understand that they've gone back to their old language, so we have specialist facilities by those communities, drive by a need to care for their elderly parents, although that generation mostly kept their own parents at home and there's still groups and societies in our country today that choose as best they can to keep their parents at home for as long as possible by keeping them in their household or having them move into their household when one or the other passes away.

That's why I just don't want to see aged care and an incident that happened in Victoria on the steps of the parliament brought into this place with this huge accusation against the Leader of the Opposition from the Attorney-General when he had nothing to do with it. It was a long bow. But he didn't only include the opposition leader in his attack; he included me as well.

A new member of parliament—I won't name her or what seat she was from—accused me of being a misogynist last night. She didn't understand. I don't know who wrote it for her, but it can't have come out of her experience of this place or me or anybody else. She said: 'I wasn't talking about you, Russell—not about you. I was talking about your party.' What does she know of my party? What does she know of the members? How could you say such a thing in this House?

When the new Prime Minister came in—and I've seen a few of them come in—he said: 'I want a better parliament. I want a more reasonable parliament.' Isn't it about time he started to pass it on to those on the floor of the parliament? A deputy Speaker shouldn't have to pull up a new member of parliament for accusing the opposition of being misogynists. Why? It's totally out of order. I don't believe she wrote the speech. I believe she's a good person.

When I'm talking about aged care, I'm talking about the care that goes right across the community too, because we reflect our communities. We reflect the electorate that we're from, and in my electorate, the electorate of Monash, I can tell you that, for aged-care provision, over all the time I've been in and out of this place since 1990 and from everything I learned about aged care before 1990, people were giving wonderful service and provision to their older people with respect and trust from the families that have their older people in those aged-care facilities. There was trust from them that their parents and grandmums and nannas will be cared for within that facility.

I want to finish by thanking everybody who's a retired aged-care worker not to take this personally. It is not an attack on you. It is only about so-called 'divisions' within this parliament. That type of attack has to end. The Prime Minister has given the lead. Let's follow the Prime Minister's lead—everybody in the parliament.

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