Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

Last week I saw how important aged care is in my electorate. I visited the Eventide Lutheran Home. About 50 of the residents gathered for morning tea, and they asked me to have a word with them, which I did, and then we went to Q&A. I've got to say: it was like question time and a bit more! They had questions on everything for me. In seeing all the residents come together like that, with some of the staff and with the manager, I saw an example of what aged care can provide to the community. It was wonderful to see. I say to all the aged-care providers right across my electorate: thank you for what you do. Having good aged-care providers in our country communities, in our country towns, is so important because it means that our residents can age where they've lived, that we can provide employment through our aged-care sector and that the community can visit their loved ones, the elderly, and don't have to travel to do it. That's why it's so important that we get any changes to our aged-care system right.

While I'm talking about great community events, it would be remiss of me not to mention another community event I did last week. I called in and saw the Hamilton VIEW Club ladies, who were having a luncheon which they do once a month to raise funds for The Smith Family Learning for Life students. They've been doing that for well over 45 years. What these ladies are doing for the community is wonderful. To give you a sense of the contribution they've made, some of the Learning for Life students they've helped have now grown up and are mentoring students through Standing Tall, a wonderful mentoring program in my electorate. That goes to show what our wonderful volunteer organisations can do. I take this moment to give a big shout-out to the Hamilton VIEW Club ladies; thank you for what you do on behalf of our community.

Getting back to the Aged Care Bill 2024: as I mentioned, that visit to the Eventide Lutheran aged-care facility brought home to me how important it is that we get these reforms right. The coalition, after commissioning the royal commission report, said to the government, 'We want to work with you in a bipartisan way so that, after the royal commission, we can get the reforms right that are needed for our aged-care sector.' What was detailed in the royal commission showed there was a need for us to change the way the aged-care system works in this country, and especially for us to have a look at what we can do about this new rights based aged-care approach. That's why we will have a new rights based aged-care act, and that is incredibly important.

We have continued to honour that commitment of working in a bipartisan way with the government to get this right. The government came to the coalition and detailed some changes they wanted to make. We looked at that and said, 'We think you actually need to make changes to the approach you're taking.' We have argued very strongly for making sure that the funding for rural and regional Australia is right. You have to remember the advantages that aged-care provision has in the city versus those in regional and rural Australia. This was a real focus of ours, to make sure we got it right.

As part of those discussions, the coalition was able to secure $300 million in additional capital funding through the Aged Care Capital Assistance Program for regional, rural and remote aged-care providers to upgrade their facilities, as well as additional care funding, particularly for regional, rural and remote aged-care homes. Targeted support for regional, rural and remote aged-care homes was not included in the government's initial proposal and that is why this was absolutely vital.

I know that in my electorate of Wannon it has always been the community that has sought to fund a lot of our not-for-profit providers through lots of volunteer hours because they know how important it is that people can age in the community where they live. But given the expense of regulation and everything that has been added to aged-care provision, it is now getting harder and harder for local communities to be able to support, especially capital upgrades, facilities and that is why this additional $300 million for these capital upgrades is will be so important going forward. It is crucial we understand that providing the care that is needed in regional, rural and remote areas can sometimes comes at additional cost and build that recognition into the system so our aged-care providers in rural Australia can get the additional assistance they need, whether it be for nurse provision or for any other provisions.

The government has listened to us and made adjustments, especially when it came to the provision of care in regional and rural Australia. The aged-care providers I have been speaking to in my electorate say that, from the headlines that have been detailed so far, the changes that have been proposed through this package look okay but, once again, they do want some more detail. That is why we continue to reserve our final position on this bill until this package and this legislation go for a proper Senate inquiry. Once that inquiry hands down its report, it will be a lot clearer what adjustments still need to be made to this bill.

One of the things mentioned previously was how much will be in regulation versus how much will be in the legislation. Until we know exactly what is going to be in the regulation and how it is going to be framed, there will be some uncertainty as to the final details and the impacts that these aged-care reforms might possibly have. We have to make sure that we get it right.

There a few things that we have also insisted on which I think are really important. We insisted on grandfathering, so everyone who is in the system and everyone who has begun the process of entering the system will not have the rules changed on them. They can rest easy knowing that these changes will not impact them and that is incredibly important, because a lot of families are doing it tough trying to provide the aged-care support for their elderly loved ones. They do not need changes which upset the apple cart because a lot of them have planned and planned meticulously to enable their loved ones to be able to get the support they need, so the last thing we want to be doing is pulling the rug from under them, especially given the cost-of-living crisis, the cost-of-doing-business crisis, that so many people are facing at this moment.

The other thing that we fought for is a much fairer deal for hardworking Australians—for those people who are struggling to make ends meet at the moment. We wanted to make sure that there was the inclusion of a much lower taper rate to ensure equitable contributions for Australians who have worked hard all their lives. That was something that we obviously impressed upon the government as well. We also fought for the maintenance of a lifetime cap on care contributions, across both residential and home care, to provide certainty to families as they're thinking about what could be the final financial contribution that they need to make.

Importantly—and I know this is important, because this is one of the largest pieces of feedback that I got from my aged-care provider boards—you've got to remember that in regional and rural Australia, and it's one of the things that I love about regional and rural Australia, is you get volunteers. You get volunteers that go on the not-for-profit boards of our aged-care facilities because they understand how important those facilities are. They're prepared to give up their time to make sure that aged-care provision continues in our community—whether it be in Casterton, Hamilton, Warrnambool, Portland, Camperdown, Ararat or Colac. Right across the board, we've got people volunteering to make sure there is aged-care provision.

The idea that these people, all volunteers, could face criminal penalties for circumstances which may be completely out of their control was, I think, the wrong approach to take, and a lot of the feedback I got from the people volunteering on those boards was, 'Given the high regulatory environment of aged care, why would you volunteer if a mistake could end up with you in jail?' I think it makes perfect sense to change this removal of criminal penalties, because otherwise what would have happened was these volunteers would have said, 'Sorry; we're not going to volunteer anymore on these boards,' and then you wouldn't have aged-care provision in our communities. You have to remember that the vast majority of people who provide that aged-care provision—whether it be in Mortlake, Winchelsea, Lorne, Apollo Bay or all those other facilities that I've mentioned—want to do the right thing. I think it absolutely made common sense to make sure that they wouldn't face criminal penalties.

The other thing that we fought very hard to remove was something called the 'worker voice'. This was about forcing unions into every aged-care home in the country. You have to understand what this would mean, especially for these not-for-profits that I'm talking about. If all of a sudden they're dealing with unions' right for entry, unions dictating to them everything that needs to happen in an aged-care facility, these boards, which have wonderful volunteers, and the staff that are doing a wonderful job caring for our elderly would see their workplaces upturned through the unions marching in the front door. Taking out what was nefariously called the worker voice was also incredibly important. It means—once again, we've got to have this inquiry—is that this bill is in a far better place than where it was when the coalition started discussions with the government.

Obviously we've still got a long way to go because there is that inquiry and the feedback that comes from that inquiry. We'll be making sure that we interrogate this legislation fully. The recommendations that come back from the inquiry are going to be really important in making the final decision on our side as to whether we ultimately can support this legislation or not. Changes like securing that extra $300 million, taking out the worker voice, making sure that those working Australians who have worked hard all their lives can have certainty around what they're going to be paying when it comes to aged care, and more, have made this bill better. But we'll wait and see what comes out of the inquiry to decide our final position on the bill.

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