Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I start, I pay tribute to the member for Nicholls and his contribution. I was honoured to be in the room for that contribution and I have no doubt that his father, Brian, was very and is very proud of him and everything he has achieved for his community before being elected and since being elected. What the member for Nicholls shared in his story—his courage—is that idea that aged care is something that we all have a stake in.

Whether you're already living in aged care, you have a family member or a grandparent in aged care, or you're thinking about your own future, it is in the interests of all Australians that we have a strong and dignified aged-care system. It's something that we are all touched by at some point in our lives, and in many ways we as a society will be defined by how we treat those in aged care and how we treat young people as well.

I am very lucky to have a lot of great facilities and aged care facilities in my community, and I want to pay tribute to two that I was able to visit in the last two weeks. I was able to present Australian flags to Monda Lodge in Healesville and AdventCare in Warburton. This gave me a great opportunity to talk to the residents, to hear their stories and to hear in a really positive way about how they are enjoying their time at those facilities, and that is what we need to do. As the member for Grey, the member for Nicholls and so many have said, we need to look after those who have built our communities and our country.

The coalition wants to see a thriving aged-care sector. That's why we called for the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. We've remained resolute in advocating for the dignity and clarity that older Australians deserve, and that is why, while looking to work in a bipartisan and collaborative way with the government, we will reserve our position until the committee delivers its final report.

This bill delivers on the first recommendation of the royal commission, which is to implement a new rights-based aged-care act. The Aged Care Bill 2024 will replace the Aged Care Act and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act. The issues for our aged-care system are undeniable. More than half of the aged-care homes across the nation are operating at a loss. We have an ageing population. Australians have a desire to stay at home for as long as possible. These things combined show us that we must change the way that aged care is delivered. We also need to recognise and acknowledge what the Intergenerational report and many other reports show: aged care is one of the top five costs, spends or investments in the federal budget. But we need to make sure that that is sustainable going forward, because we know projections are for deficits as far as the eye can see.

In my electorate of Casey, many older residents have a strong desire to stay at home and to remain a part of the community that they have spent their lives in, given the regional and rural nature of some parts. Many are able to do this with some help here and there from family. But the system is letting others down, and this is something I have spoken of previously. I know the member for Mayo, who is in the chamber, has also spoken about these challenges. I'm contacted regularly by elderly residents and their families about issues with accessing care at home through the My Aged Care system. Each and every week, my office assists constituents who are having difficulties accessing services that have been approved under their package.

In 20 October 2023, I wrote to the minister on behalf of a number of constituents who were unable to access services that had been approved through My Aged Care. One of these constituents—he is now 93 and his wife is 91—was not even able to get on a waiting list for mowing services. I was contacted by his daughter-in-law, who has been a fantastic advocate for her in-laws. She managed to get an assessor to come out to assess the mother, but the assessor couldn't assess the father in the same visit. Having received no notification of the outcome, she followed up with My Aged Care and was told that the mother's package had been approved back in May, but they were not notified. On the same call she was advised that her father's referral had 'got stuck in the system'. When seeking further information, she was informed that her mother's package had, in fact, no funding attached and there would be at least a 12-month wait for this service. These are two people in their 90s who just want some help getting their lawns mown. The toll this has taken not only on my elderly constituents but on their daughter-in-law, who has had no choice but to constantly follow this up, is unacceptable.

All this happened despite the minister being aware of the situation and replying in December last year to my correspondence. I wrote again to the minister and I received a response on 16 October. It states:

The government is working on reducing wait times.

The minister then goes on to say:

Support at Home will better support older people to remain independent at home through an increase in places, with an additional 300,000 places supported by 2034-35.

The minister 's solution for my 90-year-old constituents is that there will be support available in 10 years! It goes to show how out of touch the Labor government are with the needs of older Australians. They show no regard for their quality of life.

But these residents are not the only ones. I was contacted by the daughter of another community member, who said the following:

I have spent many hours advocating for mum, being her carer and getting her to and from medical appointments. But I would much rather she was able to benefit from the care designed to be delivered by her home care package and for me to have shared those same hours with her as her daughter, providing social care and creating memories. Instead, I have been "functional", doing jobs that needed doing but not enjoying all the mother daughter moments we should have. The system does not support that.

Through good-faith negotiations with the government, the coalition have achieved significant changes to the government's proposed legislation that will protect the interests of older Australians and future generations. We have worked tirelessly to ensure the government's reforms are fairer, particularly for Australians who have worked hard all their lives to save for their retirement. That's why we pushed the government to include grandfathering arrangements for those already in the system or on waiting lists, lifetime caps, a much lower taper rate and an assurance that the federal government will remain the majority funder of aged care, not residents and those using the system.

One of the most critical outcomes of our efforts was the introduction of the grandfathering arrangements. These arrangements guarantee that Australians who are already in residential aged care, on a home-care package or assessed as waiting for their allocated home-care package will not see any changes to their existing arrangements. In effect, it means that all Australians currently in the aged-care system will not pay one cent more for their aged care.

We also advocated for a lower taper rate towards care contributions, to ensure those who have worked hard and saved for their retirement are dealt a fairer deal. The taper rates we demanded mean that funding contributions increase at a much slower rate than the government wanted.

We also fought for the maintenance of a lifetime cap on care contributions. These caps we demanded mean that Australians will always know that the maximum they can ever be required to contribute is fixed, to give them certainty. Importantly, the maintenance of a lifetime cap will provide families with peace of mind when it comes to the associated costs of caring for their loved ones.

In addition to these financial safeguards, the coalition secured an additional investment of $300 million in capital funding for regional, rural and remote aged-care providers, who are struggling to remain open under the Albanese government. The coalition has always recognised that rural and regional aged-care homes face unique challenges and need more support from the government. This funding is critical for upgrading facilities that often struggle to meet the necessary standards due to financial constraints.

We also worked hard to remove criminal penalties from this bill, following serious concerns that they would force the exit of highly capable staff from the sector in fear of being criminally punished to a level not seen in any other industry. Let's be very clear: by removing criminal penalties from this bill, the coalition has not given a free ticket to providers in the wrong. Existing workplace health and safety laws, banning orders and criminal codes provide the necessary regulatory framework to hold people to account, without driving people away from the industry with fear and scare tactics, to make sure that our older Australians can get the care they need and deserve. We already know worker shortages, particularly in regional and rural facilities, but also in all facilities, are an ongoing challenge.

We also squashed Labor's outrageous attempt to force unionism into every aged-care home. Labor wanted a workers representative to be able to come into every single aged-care home and demand an explanation on any aspect of its operations. We support aged-care providers working consultatively with their staff, but we will not let unions march into aged-care homes and tell them how to do their jobs.

While there have been significant achievements made by the coalition during our negotiations with the government, the government has failed to address critical issues such as workforce shortages, regulatory impacts and implementation timelines in this bill. These details are so crucial. As we've seen time and time again, creating the policy and announcing the policy are in some ways the easy part. The implementation and the detail of how we get this right are so crucial, particularly when we are talking about aged care and any care sector where we're looking after our most vulnerable. As we see with the examples of my community members that I talked about previously, if rollouts are going to take 10 years, we need to understand the human cost of that delay.

The coalition is seeking to ensure the introduction of this bill will not force the closure of more homes but instead result in the commencement of critical new builds across the sector. We are disappointed by the lack of transparency the government has shown to the Australian public throughout the entire process of these reforms, with the conversations forced to occur behind closed doors, which caused anxiety for many in our community. It is clear from the two inquiry hearings held thus far that there is notable frustration from older Australians and the sector. The frustration is that many of the changes proposed by the government were not consulted upon.

The bill, however, aims to ensure that the Commonwealth aged-care services remain accessible to those who require them today and into the future. It seeks to promote dignity, independence and a meaningful life for older Australians, which the coalition and I remain committed to. We will continue to consult with older Australians and the sector through the ongoing inquiry process and work through the issues that are raised as we seek to achieve dignity and clarity for all older Australians. We will continue to seek to do that in a bipartisan way. Despite the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and many others, when it comes to two of the biggest costs to the budget—the NDIS and aged care—the coalition has worked in a constructive, collaborative and bipartisan way to deliver results for all Australians to improve the outcomes while always continuing to hold the government to account.

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