Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After almost a year in office, the government continues to distinguish itself by the utter contempt it shows our older citizens. Dragged kicking and screaming by the opposition, flinching in the face of the financial crisis, it finally did as we had urged and made some extra funds available to pensioners. But what else has the government done to aid seniors, whose standard of living has steadily declined throughout its term in office? Government members should be hanging their heads in shame over the government’s treatment of seniors. Just last month the OECD reported that Australia has the fourth-highest poverty rate for over-65s among the world’s most developed nations. For singles aged over 65, Australia had the highest relative income poverty rate in the OECD. The Prime Minister said he could not survive on the age pension, yet he expects others to do so. The bonus payment promised last month is not going to provide any more than light relief, especially when we know the government is giving with one hand but planning to take away with the other.

There was a very disturbing report last month from the University of Western Australia’s School of Population Health which said pensioners were skipping potentially life-saving medication to save money. Pensioners’ use of essential medicines had fallen by up to 11 per cent as the price of filling their prescriptions rose to $5 early this year, one of the school’s research associates said. How much worse will things get when the government has its way next year and takes the Commonwealth seniors card from many retirees who are already struggling?

That is the government’s plan. They want to punish people who manage to put away some superannuation for their retirement by treating their super as assessable income so that they can steal the benefits of our seniors. Until now, that income from super has not formed part of the assessment for entitlement to cards which older Australians use to access a range of benefits, the most critical of which allows the purchase of medicine at highly subsidised prices. But this is what the government want to do, effective next financial year. It is a disgrace.

In my electorate of Tangney, more than 3,000 retirees sent in postcards to express their disapproval of the Rudd government after learning of this plot. More than 200 crammed into a local hall to express their rage at what they see as abuse by a government which does not care—a government which is intent on punishing seniors for reasons known only to itself. Then there is the planned change to partner service pensions. Spouses of veterans who separate from their partners are set to lose their entitlement to the pension. Those affected are all women aged over 50. The pension is paid to those who served in conflict. The government claims this will save money, but the reality is that these people, often after a lifetime of supporting their—

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member has not once referred to the actual bill—not once. He has not even mentioned the name—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been listening to the contribution of the member for Tangney. He is talking about veterans, and I would have thought aged care and the entitlements they receive are correlated, but I would also remind the member for Tangney of the bill before the House, which relates to amendments to the Aged Care Act and other measures.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Instead of receiving an entitlement in recognition of service to this nation, they will be scrounging scraps from Centrelink, receiving unemployment benefits or the age pension—

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Would the member for Tangney accept an intervention?

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will continue with my remarks. The government says that if a wife and a veteran separate then 12 months later or when—

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have before me the bill and nowhere in the bill does it talk about veterans; rather, it relates to the Aged Care (Bond Security) Act 2006 and it looks at the regulatory safeguards that are around high-quality aged care for Australians. Does he know the difference between aged care and income support?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland will not debate the issue. The member for Shortland has raised a point of order in relation to the bill which is entitled the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. The member for Tangney has been talking about veterans who I thought would have been obviously considered beneficiaries, in some cases, of aged care pensions. But I would remind the member for Tangney of the bill before the chamber. I also say that often there has been quite a lot of leniency by the chair in both the Main Committee and the House in relation to bills. On this occasion I would bring the member for Tangney to the bill before the chamber.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This speech, as you correctly assert, refers to aged care and things such as pensions for elderly people. Of course, we welcome last month’s announcements of the one-off payments to be made to pensioners.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This bill refers to police checks and aged care accommodation bonds; it does not refer to pensions.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Shortland that the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 is a bill for an act to amend the law in relation to aged care and for related purposes. It is quite a long title. I call the member for Tangney.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am really sorry to be so pedantic—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are not going to debate the issue.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The further issues are things like police checks and relate to the way in which disclosure of aged care providers—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland will resume her seat. I have ruled on that matter and I also drew the member for Tangney’s attention to the bill before the chamber, but it does refer to related purposes and I think he was referring to aged care as he commenced his further contribution.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is entirely correct. As I was saying, of course we welcome last month’s announcements of one-off payments to be made to pensioners. We have been demanding action on that for months, but the payments should not be seen as some sort of a gift as the government seems to believe. A reasonable lifestyle with a pension that is sufficient to survive on is a right for people who grew up with the understanding that their tax contributions would be returned in part in their retirement. The fact that we have more recently moved increasingly toward self-funded retirement is irrelevant. We owe today’s pensioners much and we must provide a reasonable pension. When we have older Australians skipping medication because they cannot afford it and subsisting on jam or baked beans because a reasonable diet is beyond their reach then something is very wrong.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Tangney will resume his seat. The member for Shortland has not risen on a frivolous point of order, I hope.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is certainly not frivolous, Mr Deputy Speaker—absolutely not frivolous. The fact is that the member has not once even mentioned the title of the bill or any issue that relates to this piece of legislation. I ask that—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland has made her point of order. I again call the member for Tangney. I would also point out to the member for Shortland that the bill at item 3 proposes to insert after paragraph 8-3(1)(g):

(iii)

the person’s record of financial management, and the methods that the person uses or used in order to ensure sound financial management …

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Hall interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. I have ruled, and the member for Tangney has clearly got the message. He knows the bill that is before the House. I have allowed some leniency. But I have also pointed out, in relation to veterans’ entitlements, that a person’s financial management is referred to in the bill. The member for Tangney has the call.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the benefit of the member for Shortland, the bill is the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As far as the Economic Security Strategy is concerned, the coalition stood ready to offer full bipartisan support; all we asked of the government were details. Did we receive them? No. Offers of talks and discussions with the opposition, and even ideas put forward, were recklessly dismissed. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer simply decided to go it alone, not even bothering to have discussions with the Governor of the Reserve Bank. Apparently they knew better than the governor!

This failure to listen, this failure to heed advice, caused a huge mess. I refer particularly to the introduction of the unlimited bank deposit guarantee scheme. The freezing of thousands of people’s funds, a lot of whom are self-funded retirees who need that money, only added to the chaos. But this was in keeping with the repugnant disdain with which the government view the aged. Clearly, no thought went into the possible outcome of their rushed, headline-grabbing attempt to save Australia. Their advice to those people whose funds were frozen, leaving them in hardship, was to ‘just head down to Centrelink’. What an insult. What a joke. The opposition asked for details—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Tangney, you are testing my patience. I know that with most bills the issue of relevance in both this chamber and the main chamber becomes almost irrelevant from time to time, but I would like to see the member refer a little more to aged care and the provision of aged care, which are the main words in the title of the bill before the chamber.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. The aged-care system is also a disaster-in-waiting, and if it cannot cope with the demands of today then it will truly be in crisis as our ageing population applies more pressure in the years ahead. In my state of Western Australia and elsewhere in the country, aged-care providers are rejecting offers of federal funding because the margins have been eroded to almost nothing. See? All you needed to do was wait a little bit, until after the preamble.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fifteen minutes?

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it would have been about five if it had not been for the interruptions?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Tangney will continue.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And what has been the government response? Did they talk to industry? Did they try to work out how those funds could be used in a viable way to create new aged-care places?

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. No. According to reports, in one case they actually referred the matter to the ACCC. So an organisation which declined to take up a flawed offer of federal funding—because to do so would have been economically unviable—is being investigated for possible trade breaches. What a joke. Presumably the minister thinks that private sector interests should be run at a loss to satisfy the government’s political whims.

Earlier this month, consultants Grant Thornton reported that the average return on investment in a single bed aged-care room was equivalent to just 1.1 per cent per annum. Average earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation in 2008 were only $2,934 per bed, down from $3,211 a year earlier. The average cost to providers for the establishment of each bed, excluding land, has soared from between $74,000 and $85,000 in 2003 to $176,000 today. With figures like these it is easy to see why there is a reluctance to invest in aged-care facilities. Why take any risk for such a trifling return when even a bank savings account will pay more?

Financial considerations also mean that aged-care facilities are not being maintained or redeveloped appropriately. The Grant Thornton report noted that 44 per cent of the facilities are more than 20 years old and another 30 per cent are between 10 and 20 years old. Some facilities were closed after providers became insolvent, causing immeasurable stress to residents and their families. Again Grant Thornton states:

These closures are likely to become more common unless the underlying problems with current pricing and regulatory arrangements are addressed.

Those are your problems. Similarly, there is evidence that some facilities have been forced to cut back recreation activities which do so much to contribute to the quality of life of residents.

There must be incentive for private sector activity if the burden of providing aged care is not to fall on the state, which is really in no position to cope with this alone. This is the problem with the bill before us today—it offers no substantive change at all. It tweaks the edges of the issue but addresses none of the major problems afflicting the aged-care system. It is all very well to make these minor changes, but it is ultimately pointless if there are no beds available.

There are 2.8 million Australians over the age of 65. It has been estimated that about half of them require regular help, mostly in their own homes. There are 150,000 in residential aged care, which they enter at the average age of 82, and more than 100,000 of them are receiving high-level care, which is the most demanding of resources. Today there are 400,000 Australians aged over 85 and that number will increase to 1.6 million by 2047. Today there have been only 2,860 people aged over 100. By 2055 there will be 78,000. At the same time, in 2007 there were five people of working age for every person over the age of 65, but by 2047 there will be only 2.4 people. It is a recipe for disaster unless the government comes to grips with the issues today.

Major changes are needed to ensure that our aged are properly cared for. News reports say that the government is planning to provide 37,000 extra beds over the next three years. But, at the same time, 10,000 existing places have not been taken up by the industry. They do not want beds, because it is simply no longer a viable proposition. The government urgently needs to sit down with industry and work out sensible pricing and funding so that it can meet the needs of both providers and those requiring care. While the Prime Minister and his family may be lucky enough never to need such care, and are certainly lucky enough that they could afford private arrangements if they were necessary, the reality for hundreds of thousands of Australians is completely different.

Surely the minister is aware of the Productivity Commission research paper released in September which calls for action to fix the aged-care system. Perhaps I can jog her memory. It said:

The ageing of Australia’s population will call for the provision of aged care services to much larger numbers of people over the next few decades. Services will also need to meet the challenges posed by the increasing diversity of older people in terms of their care needs, preferences and affluence.

It added:

… there are concerns that current institutional arrangements, which rely on a planning mechanism in concert with aged care assessments and controls over extra service provision and pricing of services, could involve significant avoidable cost. For example, these controls in their current form combine to limit the scope for competition between providers, distort investment decision-making, restrict consumer choice and weaken incentives for innovation.

The proportion of GDP required for government spending on aged care was 0.7 per cent in 2006-07 and will almost triple to 1.9 per cent in 2046-47. Given all this, it is disturbing that today we are looking at a bill which deals only with the trivial, a bill which is mere window-dressing.

Mankind has made massive strides in improving health over the last century, consequently increasing lifespan by many years. This change in longevity and the accompanying changes in disease patterns will require new planning for the provision of aged care. It also highlighted other aged-care issues which need to be addressed now if the system is to be effective in the future.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is indeed a pleasure to stand today to address the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. In doing so, as the member for Tangney goes to leave the chamber—which is fair enough—I thank him for his resume about pensions but make the point that actually this is more about aged care. It is over a decade since the Aged Care Act of 1997 first became law. Since then there have been some major changes within the aged-care industry. What were once typically small scale single-site, single-service operations have now evolved to become multisite facilities operating over a number of states. Another way in which the industry has evolved is the way in which the facilities offer a broad number of different services under the one roof. The industry has developed corporate structures whereby the people operating the facility are quite often not the owners of the facility.

Australians now enjoy the second-highest life expectancy rates in the world, after the Japanese, and currently there are some 2.8 million people aged 65 years and over in this country. This is expected to rise by a further seven million people up until 2051. The number of people aged over 80 years will almost double over the next 20 years. One of the great challenges that we face is caring for our ageing population. This will require careful planning and adequate resources that include enough beds and facilities and measures that will protect our frail older Australians from harm. Our aged have contributed much to the nation and it is only right that they enjoy their later years in a dignified manner and with their needs adequately cared for.

Presently there are approximately 970 approved providers holding $6.3 billion worth of accommodation bonds—that is, money paid at the point of entry by residents going into low-care facilities. This legislation will provide further protection for 170,000 senior Australians who reside in almost 3,000 aged-care homes. The legislation strikes a balance between protecting the aged and frail and their assets while guaranteeing the long-term viability of the aged-care sector. This will ensure consumer confidence and the confidence of corporate investment in aged care.

One of the aims of this legislation is to widen the range of people who are considered to be key personnel of an approved provider. This will ensure that those pulling the financial strings can also be scrutinised if required. I do not actually call that ‘fiddling around the edges’, as the previous speaker commented. This is pretty essential accountability. The legislation will also provide a tightening of regulations regarding accommodation bonds to ensure that those bonds paid by residents in aged care are fully protected under the guarantee scheme. It will protect existing lump-sum payments held by providers in the same way as accommodation bonds are protected. New providers will be required to refund lump-sum payments they received before they became approved providers.

Changes to the hardship provisions will allow for a partial accommodation subsidy for people who are unable to pay a full bond or charge. Assets will be assessed under the Aged Care Act in the same way as they are assessed under the Social Security Act and the Veterans Entitlements Act with respect to trusts and companies. In exceptional circumstances aged-care places that are not yet operational may be transferred to another approved provider where it best meets the needs of the community.

The bill will reduce waiting times through the streamlining of assessments and a reduction in red tape. I cannot think of anything better. Where you are attempting to negotiate with a provider—because that is what you have to do—for the entry of a loved one or relative as a resident into their facility, nothing can be more frustrating, demeaning, or worrisome than going through a very convoluted and complicated assessment and entry process. Such a process appears, in many cases, to be so wrapped up in red tape that you can hardly see the words that are written in front of you. I applaud anything that makes that better.

The bill also extends police checks to cover all employees in the aged-care system in order to restrict the ability of people with serious convictions, even when supervised, from working in the sector. This will ensure that people in aged care are not exposed to people with convictions for serious offences such as physical and sexual assault and murder. Whilst this is a welcome initiative, I would also comment that proper supervision should be allowed for in the resourcing of these places because, unfortunately, there are people—albeit in the minority—who may not have such a record but who do need to have good training and supervision when working in a place as sensitive as an aged-care facility.

The bill will also improve methods of formal notification to the Department of Health and Ageing on the sad occasions when residents are reported to the police as missing. This will enable the department to assess whether appropriate action has been taken to ensure the safety and welfare of all residents. The changes to the legislation allow the department to give the most weight to whether an approved provider’s noncompliance is a threat to the health, the welfare and the interests of the aged-care recipients. The bill will also clarify what services are covered under the legislation. It is becoming more commonplace for developers to place aged-care retirement villages and disability care in the one facility or in the one area. This bill will clarify that only aged-care services are covered by the Aged Care Act.

The Australian government has a strong commitment to supporting our aged and frail community, and this has been demonstrated by the record funding that the government has made to support aged and community care. The government will provide more than $40 billion over the next four years to aged and community care, and more than $28.6 billion of this will be for nursing homes and hostels. This bill will complement this funding by providing a better quality of care for older Australians whilst providing a better regulatory framework that both reflects the evolution of the aged-care industry and makes it more streamlined and more efficient.

In my concluding comments I would like to reflect on—whilst not overstating their importance—some of the comments that have been made earlier in the debate. I think it was the member for Tangney who used words to the effect that the aged-care system is a disaster waiting to happen. We have been in government for a year now, and there is no doubt that we have been doing a lot in the area of aged care. A massive amount of legislative change occurred under the previous government. It undertook a multimillion-dollar review of aged care, called the Hogan review. The Hogan review was a very broad, very large, very long, very extensive and very expensive holistic review of aged care. If my memory serves me correctly, the Hogan review came up with a very long list—a raft—of recommendations of one sort or another for aged care. Some of us would have objected to some of those recommendations, and some of us would have and applauded them. But the government that undertook the Hogan review did not, in fact, take up a great many of its recommendations, many of which concerned questions of finance.

I am not, for one moment, wanting to give the impression that I may have agreed with the financial aspects of Hogan either, but members of the previous government cannot now come into a debate like this one on an aged care amendment bill and say that all of the blame for any disastrous impact that they are predicting is going to occur in the aged-care sector in this country is now entirely sitting in front of us. They can not say that we have to take the blame for any such impact when an enormous amount of work and money was expended by the previous government in looking into aged care, primarily through the Hogan review but through other tools as well. The aged-care sector, people with relatives living in the aged-care sector, and the community at large put great emotional, and other, investment into a hope that something really thorough, extensive and good would have come from Hogan.

I think it is only fair that if Hogan did not work then the previous government should say so; if it did work then the previous government need to explain why they did not take up all of Hogan’s recommendations. As I said a moment ago, I am not for one moment suggesting that I would agree with a lot of them either, but it was not my review; it was the review of the previous government.

In closing, I want to say that, in my humble opinion, the most important area of social policy and community concern in this country, along with looking after children, has to be our care of, our concern for and the services that we endorse and supply to the older members of our community. Nothing could be more important. I know that I am not on my own when I say that I have family connections in relation to the receipt of aged care. One thing that the community of this country really needs to feel extremely confident in is that, when you are in a position where you do not have any choice but to engage in aged-care facility care, or, for that matter, aged-care in-home care, all of the steps that can be taken are being taken to ensure good, regulated and properly supervised care. You need to know that, when you entrust your loved one to that system, you are doing it with all of those feelings of confidence and security. Any bill that comes before this House that is, in any part at all, working to ensure those sorts of services and assurances must be applauded, must be agreed to and must go ahead in a positive way. I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this bill today and I am very certain that the steps that this bill covers will go some way to ensuring the sort of service delivery that I am talking about.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure that no-one here would doubt the intentions or motivations of others in this place about the purposes of reforms that are brought in terms of aged care. I think we all want the best for the older Australians who have served our country well and in all of our electorates we would be aware of countless great Australians who, now in their advancing years, are in the position where they are required to be in forms of care. It is the intention of all of us that that care be as great, as significant and as compassionate as possible.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

In resuming, I note again the earnest intention of all members of this House to seek to provide support for those older Australians in our care. But one of the things I would also note today, on the anniversary of the election of the Rudd government, is that you need to deal with the issues that are in front of you. What we have in the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 are some very marginal measures, I think. There are some big challenges in the area of aged care, and those challenges relate fundamentally, of course, to the issue of capital investment and the provision of facilities that meet changing needs. This bill deals with increased regulation. I do not wish to diminish the issues that the increased regulation seeks to address, but nonetheless I think it is very important for us to be very mindful of the fact that, if we are to provide for an increasingly ageing population, it really must be all hands to the wheel. It really must be about ensuring that the private sector, the not-for-profit sector and the government sector all work together to bring increased resources to bear. Where that cannot be done directly by the public sector, we need to ensure that we have an arrangement in aged care that enables the not-for-profit sector and the private sector to work together constructively.

The Howard government was elected in 1996 and began its reforms to aged care in 1997 with the new Aged Care Act. It dealt with many issues and aged-care principles: it introduced a unified residential care and payment system, it introduced a national quality assurance framework for residential aged care and it combined accreditation, certification and the Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme, to name just a few of the initiatives brought in by the Howard government. Now that the Rudd government has been in office for a year, I would have expected, after having looked intently at this area for the past year, that we would have seen more than we are seeing in this bill.

This bill reflects the changing nature of the aged-care sector, as was held out by the Minister for Ageing. In her second reading speech, she stated:

… a different model of aged care has emerged, one in which the owner and operator of a facility have distinct roles and responsibilities and may function quite separately.

Despite these changes, she said:

The regulatory framework has not kept pace with this shift in business practice.

She went on to say that it is also understood that the current regulations provide ‘limited capacity for the Department of Health and Ageing to consider the record of “related entities” when making decisions about approvals’ under the Aged Care Act. The minister said that this ‘limits the ability of the department to make an informed assessment of a company’s record in service delivery and its suitability to be approved to deliver care’, and that it is expected that the changes outlined in the bill will hold ‘large aged-care providers as accountable as smaller ones’.

When we think about who is going to be making these decisions and making the judgements about all these things, we need to reflect on something that Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, said today at the National Press Club, when he talked about the difference between the coalition’s approach to policy and the approach of the government. It is very much the view of those on this side of the House that it is the objective of government to enable all Australians out there to deliver the things that they can deliver to make Australia a better place—to let them be empowered to go forward, make decisions, make investments, work in this sector and do all the things that are necessary. This is different from the view of the government, which will tell you what needs to be done.

In this bill we run the risk of going down that path. It really is looking to increase regulation in a sector where too much regulation, too much oversight, too much compliance and too much filling in of forms runs the risk of making what is already a very marginal investment even more marginal. We know what happens when investments become too marginal: they become nonexistent. In the current climate, we have a global credit crisis and access to finance is difficult enough as it is. We have the challenge being faced by aged-care providers, who, in order to get new facilities established, must rely on people who are looking to move into care to sell their current homes before doing so. So there are already an enormous number of constraints and pressures on the viability of this industry. While this bill may look at specific individual regulatory changes at the margin and increasing the regulatory burden—and I grant that in some cases that may be warranted—we also must be mindful that doing so may put the broader aged-care system under a great deal of strain.

The bill also proposes the changes to further protect accommodation bonds that are held on behalf of residents. This scheme was put in place by the coalition government in 2005 to strengthen the protection surrounding accommodation bonds through the introduction of new prudential regulatory arrangements. The scheme guarantees the repayment of bond balances if a provider becomes insolvent or bankrupt. The minister has said that experience has shown some areas where the protection for residents could be strengthened. This bill addresses these issues to ensure that accommodation bonds are fully protected under the guarantee scheme.

The changes made by the previous government establish a guarantee scheme where the Australian government would pay 100 per cent of the bond balance owed to residents should an aged-care provider become insolvent or bankrupt and unable to meet its financial obligations to residents. The scheme also enables the government to become a creditor of the insolvent provider to recover debt-associated costs. The government also has the ability to levy other providers holding bonds to recover debts left by the defaulting provider from the wider industry.

I have a particular interest in these issues because of the ageing of the population, particularly in my own electorate of Cook in Sydney’s Sutherland shire, where there are approximately 34,200 persons aged 55 and over, according to the last census. Although the proportion of Sutherland shire’s residents aged between 60 and 69 is 8.3 per cent, there are a number of very discrete suburbs in my electorate where it is far higher: Kareela is 15.7 per cent, Sylvania Waters and Taren Point are 11.7 per cent, and Sylvania and Kangaroo Point are at 11½ per cent. Whereas the 70 to 84 age group makes up 8.1 per cent of the total Sutherland shire population, it is much higher for four suburbs in my electorate: again, over 10 per cent in Caringbah, Yowie Bay, Miranda and Caringbah South. An undeniable fact is that the population of the Sutherland shire is getting older. Statistics released by Sutherland Shire Council indicate that, between the 2001 census and 2006 census, the only four age groups to increase in size were between 50 and 59, 60 and 69, 70 and 84 and those aged 85 and over. All other age brackets fell in terms of their size. The 55 to 64 age group increased by 17.3 per cent between 2000 and 2006, although the 65-plus age group also increased by 8.4 per cent in the same period.

Not only is the population of the Sutherland shire getting older; the older age groups are making up a larger proportion of the total population. In its long-term plan, Sutherland Shire Council has identified that by 2020 about 40 per cent of the shire’s population will be aged over 55 years. In response to this data, Sutherland Shire Council has commenced the process of preparing a comprehensive strategy to meet the needs of the Sutherland shire’s ageing population. Indeed, prior to the last election, one of the key issues I put to my community going to the election was working together with the council and with all others who wished, particularly in the private and not-for-profit sector, to develop a long-term plan for the ageing of the population in the Sutherland shire. This is a very significant issue for our community.

The biggest issue that we face in our community is not the regulation, and it is not the issues that are addressed in this bill. It is the sheer, urgent need to find further accommodation for people who need it in our community. Our community is a very tight community. Many people in our community, particularly our older Australians, came to the shire after the Second World War. Many of them are veterans and they made our community what it is today. The idea that, by having to go into some form of care they would have to leave this community and go outside this community and live somewhere else—cut off from their community ties and cut off from where their families, their grandchildren and others are being raised—is a matter of extreme concern to them and a matter of extreme concern to me.

In order to deal with these issues we must do something about the development of aged accommodation in the Sutherland shire. That requires some urgent action at a planning and council level and it also requires this government, having come to government, to deal with the challenges of government—that is, to look at the issues of capital needs and the return on capital for investment in the aged-care sector. This is the challenge they need to face. These are the challenges you face when you come to government. It is not all smooth sailing. You cannot just come in and announce a whole range of things that do not cost any money. The surplus is being spent on a daily basis, which is why the decisions we make on how the surplus is spent are so important. You can only spend it once. Once it is spent, it is gone. We are very keen to ensure that, as we move forward, older Australians are not ignored in the process of how we invest that all-important surplus.

I will make some comments specifically about the New South Wales planning laws—in the context of this bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, aware of the concerns of those opposite that we might roam and not be very focused on the bill. The reason I raise the New South Wales laws is that they are critical to the issue of ensuring that we address the need to get investment in aged-care accommodation. By way of background, planning for aged care in New South Wales has been the responsibility of the New South Wales Department of Planning. The department established a set of standard planning controls applying to the aged-care sector known as SEPP, the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing for Seniors or People with a Disability) 2004. The planning controls for aged care fell within the provisions of SEPP No. 5, which was gazetted in 1982. In 2004, Minister Knowles commenced a review of the planning controls applying to aged persons. The review was necessary to deal with community concerns that housing for older persons was being abused, with dwellings being occupied by younger persons as a way of getting around height restrictions under other planning laws.

The New South Wales government made significant changes to SEPP 5, and a new policy called SEPP Seniors Living was introduced in May 2004. This was a blanket policy applying across the state; however, councils could seek exemptions from the policy if they could demonstrate that local policies adequately provided for the supply of housing for seniors. The main aspects of the state government policy were to set aside local policies that would prevent the development of housing for older Australians, to set design principles that would be followed to respond to the characteristics of a site, and to ensure that appropriate support services were provided in aged-care facilities. A major policy revision was gazetted in September 2007 which saw the requirement of a site compatibility certificate introduced. These certificates were obtained from the Department of Planning and were intended to avoid situations where aged-care developments were being proposed on flood-prone or bushfire-affected land. They were an acknowledgement that these types of developments were, ideally, not located in hazardous sites affected by bushfire or flooding.

Another recent change was the introduction of what became known as vertical villages. A vertical village is aged care that is provided in a multi-storey building. The policy allows the development of a vertical village on sites where apartment buildings are ordinarily permitted. These developments would provide high-rise aged care in areas located in close proximity to community services such as shops and health facilities. A requirement of these types of developments is that they provide on-site support services.

I stop here to mention that in virtually all of our communities around Australia, particularly in the suburbs, there is a real reluctance to engage in developments of high-rise buildings. It is often said that what prevents that is the NIMBY syndrome, but the point I would make about that is simply that such communities have a justifiable concern: they are reluctant to allow high-rise developments in our suburbs because they know, based on experience, particularly in my home state, that the infrastructure that is needed to support a large population is not being provided. It is absolutely essential that we develop a greater willingness and acceptance of the need to provide these types of aged-care facilities around the country, but to do that we have to understand the links between allowing a taller building to go up in a particular place and having community support for that, and the failure to deliver infrastructure—particularly in Sydney, I would stress—across suburban areas which makes communities reluctant to accept that type of development. So we need to continue to have planning policies that are very friendly to the development of aged-care accommodation as a priority.

This also goes to people who have a disability and who have been looked after for many years by older carers. As they get older and their carers, sadly, pass away, they need to move into accommodation, and it is much better for them to move into that accommodation when they are in their 50s rather than in their 60s, and before the terrible day comes when their carer actually passes away.

All those types of housing—and we are talking about housing—are necessary to support our older population so that they can enjoy quality of life in their retirement years. We need to get the planning rules right, we need to get community acceptance and, most importantly, I think, we need to get a much closer relationship in the investment sector between the not-for-profit entities and the private entities.

I would commend to the government the idea of looking through the tax treatment of aged-care accommodation. I would refer them, as I have referred the Minister for Housing in relation to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, to look more closely at what happens in the United States regarding the provision of tax credits, which provides a very useful way—handed out by state entities, but in our case it could be done by local government entities—of being able to sit in a room with those seeking to develop aged-care accommodation and deal with the financial incentives, concomitant with planning incentives and site availability, to ensure we get the accommodation where it needs to be.

The return on capital is something that we cannot ignore if we are to expect anyone other than the public sector to be involved in providing aged care in our community. It is as fundamental to getting the situation right as any aspect of regulation. There is an important role for regulation, but we must ensure there is a return on capital. It is a wise policy to encourage older Australians to remain in their homes and communities for as long as possible, but we must remember it is the case that, when the day comes for an older Australian and their partner—or without their partner—to go into care, their level of need is likely to be higher. When that level of need is higher, so are the costs. It is not just the recurrent costs but the capital costs of providing for that care. So, if we look at that, we also need to understand that at the end of the day that is going to place further strain on the investment in and financial viability of those projects when they ultimately go to market.

The point I am trying to make is that, in order to deal with the challenges of ageing, it will not be solved by one bill. I am disappointed that the bill has only dealt with some very low-order issues, some very marginal issues, after 12 months. This is the grand reform plan. There are obviously many more issues that need to be dealt with, but I would encourage the government, as they move forward with an aged-care program, to actually think outside the areas of their own investment and their own regulation. It is incumbent upon a federal government to actually look at what is happening in the community and engage that community in delivering a solution, not seek to be the answer to all questions. The answer is at a state level. It is a local-level issue, very much at a community level. There is a big role to play in understanding the future needs of older Australians in these forms of accommodation.

The other point I would make in my capacity as shadow minister for housing is that it is also absolutely vital that we get this right, because, as our household size continues to contract, further pressure will be put on the availability of housing for younger Australians. If we can make it attractive for older Australians to move into new forms of accommodation, it will free up housing stock right across our suburbs for the rest of the community. Household size is already projected to decline and we need to ensure that we address that in the future to ensure there is housing affordability for all Australians. A way to do that is by providing for a seamless transfer, an attractive transfer, for older Australians to move from their existing accommodation to new accommodation, where they will have the respect that they deserve and have earned and a comfort and quality of life that goes along with that.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will start my contribution on the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 by saying that there could not be a greater contrast between the member for Cook’s contribution and the member for Tangney’s contribution to this debate. Whilst the member for Cook did not concentrate exclusively on issues that are included in this legislation, he did give a really good summary of aged care and the issues that confront governments when they are considering aged care.

Firstly I need to put on the record that the responsibility for aged care rests largely with the Commonwealth government. State governments have only a very minor role to play in aged care—that is, building, planning and design, occupational health and safety, food preparation and consumer protection. They are very minor roles. Issues surrounding planning go across both levels of government. As we age, as a community there are many issues that we need to look at in housing for older people. One element of that is included in the legislation before us today: aged-care facilities.

The Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 puts in place some of the reforms that were earmarked by the Minister for Ageing in her announcement on 22 March 2008 and are part of the Better Protection for Frail Aged Australians reform package that the Rudd government is putting in place. This is part of it; it is not the whole of it. Members of the opposition had 12 years in government to get aged care right. Unfortunately, I would have to give them an F for their efforts in this area.

I have had a longstanding interest in aged care. Some of the most vulnerable people in our society are cared for in aged-care accommodation. The people who live in our high-care and low-care facilities really depend on the government to get it right. If we do not get it right then these vulnerable people are placed at risk. Within my electorate there are some fantastic aged-care providers. In fact, my husband works in the aged-care industry. I know how committed all the providers are to ensuring that their residents have the quality aged care that they deserve.

This bill addresses some inadequacies and maintains effective regulatory safeguards for ensuring high-quality care for the older Australians I am talking about—those frail older people who need to move from their home or from some innovative form of aged care like the previous speaker, the member for Cook, talked about. This bill links approved provider status to the allocation of aged-care places—it directly links that to Commonwealth funding. The bill modernises the current legislation so that it is better aligned with contemporary business practice and applies to all approved providers, regardless of their corporate status. That means that the same rules apply to everyone. It streamlines the assessment of frail older Australians to ensure more timely, consistent and quality assessments. It ensures that any accommodation bonds or like payments by frail older Australians for entry into aged-care services are fully protected under the accommodation guarantee scheme. It makes some minor operational changes to improve the administration of the legislation so it operates more effectively.

I want to touch on some of the elements I have already mentioned. Firstly, I would like to bring to the attention of the House the fact that currently when it comes to aged-care assessments sometimes people wait for a long time to gain entry to aged-care facilities. Within the Shortland electorate the number of people waiting for accommodation has diminished over the last year, but for a very long time people have had to wait an inordinate amount of time to gain entry to either low-care or high-care facilities or aged-care packages.

I will share with the parliament one example. An elderly resident had been waiting for an aged-care package. She had been assessed by an aged-care assessment team. She waited in excess of 12 months to obtain this package. Her assessment ran out and she was left languishing. It was only when my office intervened that we could arrange for another assessment to take place. She had the assessment, which found that within that 18-month period she had gone from needing an aged-care package to actually needing to find accommodation in a high-care aged-care facility.

I think it is imperative that people do have an appropriate ACAT assessment, that they are not subjected to constant ACAT assessments and that they are placed in facilities in a timely manner. That is something that we on this side of the parliament put at the forefront of our aged-care policy: ensuring that people who need the care provided by an aged-care facility can actually obtain that care—and, as I have already said, that has improved considerably over the last 12 months—and ensuring that, once they have obtained that care, they have the proper protections in place.

Over the years the aged-care industry has changed somewhat. Currently, as I think the member for Cook pointed out, older Australians make up 13.4 per cent of the population—that is, 2.8 million or one in seven Australians over the age of 65. By 2050 the Productivity Commission estimates that one in four Australians will be over the age of 65. Shortland electorate is actually ranked the 10th or 11th oldest electorate in Australia and the figure for people over the age of 65 is 18.3 per cent. So I am sure the House can understand my concern in relation to aged care and ensuring that we have quality aged care for all those people who I represent in this parliament. That can best be ensured by making absolutely certain that the legislation that is in place is quality legislation that will ensure the provision of quality aged care.

In 2007 there were around 2,872 residential aged-care providers in Australia. Of these, approximately 61.4 per cent were private not-for-profit, 26.9 per cent were private for-profit and the remaining were government providers. That 26.9 per cent of providers will be made more accountable under this legislation. The setting in 2008 is significantly different to that in 1997, when the original legislation went through the parliament. The industry has matured somewhat and there have been significant changes. The sector has evolved from one-site operators, where you had a private aged-care provider who was operating on one site—it was a cottage industry type approach to aged care—to where there are now multiple services operating from the one site and corporations operating multisite aged-care facilities. As such, the operations have become much more complex from a financial and legal perspective.

This bill before us addresses current legislative inadequacies and maintains effective regulatory safeguards for ensuring high-quality aged care for older Australians. As I mentioned, the change and the developments that have taken place need to be reflected in legislation. This different model of aged care that has emerged is one in which the owner operator, as I have pointed out, quite often has a distinctive role—the owner is not the person on-site operating the facility. So they are very different functions. The regulatory framework has not kept pace with this shift in business practices and there is often a lack of consistency between the regulations and contemporary business practice, which means that regulations have not been applied equally to all providers regardless of their corporate structure.

The shortcomings of the existing framework are varied and they impact upon care providers, care recipients and the broader community. Let us talk about care recipients. They are those frail, older Australians who need to live in one of our aged-care facilities. In moving to those aged-care facilities they need to be sure that the care they receive is of a kind that ensures a good—or as good as possible—quality of life. Once a person lives in an aged-care facility it becomes their home, and that really means that we have to make sure that their life in that home is one such as we would like for our own mothers and fathers. Under the current regulations, there is limited capacity for the Department of Health and Ageing to consider the record of related entities which make decisions about approvals. This unnecessarily and inappropriately limits the ability of the department to make an informed assessment of a company’s records in service delivery and to determine its suitability to be approved to deliver care in the future.

I think this is a very important point. The department must know about the company’s record in service delivery. Unless it has that knowledge it cannot know that the company is suitable to deliver care in the future. Having such knowledge provides better protection for residents and promotes public confidence. Public confidence in the aged-care industry under the last government was, I think, lacking. I quite often had constituents come and raise with me the fact that they did not have that confidence. We need to know who is pulling the financial strings, and that knowledge is not currently available. For the purpose of regulatory scrutiny, we need to know who those key personnel are. This legislation will ensure that that takes place.

At this point I need to emphasise that there are many quality aged-care providers who are accountable. The department does know the makeup of their board and their financial position. I truly believe that that should apply to all operators, and this legislation will ensure that this happens. Increasingly, developers are putting aged-care retirement villages and sometimes disability or step down care all in the same development, giving rise to uncertainty relating to the regulation under the act. We need to ensure that we have maximum knowledge about what is taking place in aged-care facilities, how they all connect and who the key personnel involved in any particular aged-care facilities are.

The other issue that is covered in this legislation relates to accommodation bonds—ensuring that the bonds of people who enter an aged-care facility are fully protected under the aged-care Accommodation Bond Guarantee Scheme and that residents of similar accommodation facilities are accorded protection. Experiences since the introduction of the guarantee scheme in 2006 have highlighted that there are areas where this protection could be stronger. We on this side of the House take our responsibility in that area very seriously.

The aged-care industry involves a number of different people. There are the aged-care providers, there are the workers in the aged-care industry and, of course, there are the people who live in aged-care facilities. The Rudd government believe that we have a responsibility to all those people. We have a responsibility to ensure that we have quality providers—that it is an industry that attracts the right type of provider: people who are prepared to invest in the infrastructure that is needed, in quality staff to work in the industry and in training those quality staff. We also recognise that it is very important to ensure that there are adequate numbers of staff in the industry and that those staff are properly trained and remunerated. And, of course, we need to ensure that the frail aged who enter our aged-care facilities are properly cared for.

The Rudd government will work closely with all the people from all the sectors that are involved in aged care. We will work closely with the providers of aged care, the workers in the aged-care industry and aged-care facility residents and their families. I want to emphasise ‘and their families’ because it is imperative that, if you have a loved one living in an aged-care facility, you have confidence in that aged-care facility. So we make a commitment to the Australian people that they can have that confidence about everyone involved in aged care. This is one of the reforms that have been made that were promised on 22 March 2008. Along with that comes a strengthening of existing police check requirements for people working in the aged-care industry. That is another aspect of ensuring, once again, that people can have confidence in the staff and the aged-care facilities.

Under the previous government we had the Hogan review. Very little came out of the Hogan review. We are more about action and ensuring that we have a viable aged-care sector in Australia. (Time expired)

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For all of the years I have known the member for Shortland, I have known her to be a very decent and caring person. When she says that she has great empathy for people who need the services of the aged-care industry, she means it. She does; she has got a heart of gold. But I am not so certain that the Rudd government has that same heart of gold. A case could easily be made that, since winning government, Labor has ignored older Australians; you can easily demonstrate that. You can easily demonstrate that the current government is in denial about the serious state the industry is in.

Over the years there has always been a tremendous shortage of aged-care places, but in some areas of Australia those places are now undersubscribed. Bed licences are being handed back. Providers do not want them anymore. That is of serious concern because in other places in Australia there remains quite a shortage of bed licences, and I am going to refer particularly to Townsville in this contribution in the parliament this afternoon.

When the former government were defeated a year ago, we left a world-class health system to the Rudd government. Over the four terms during which I was a member of the Howard government, from 1996, we addressed the hard issues. Some of the time it was just so difficult getting through those issues in aged care. It is like the health system—there is never enough money. But we did leave a very robust and well-performing system, because we delivered wide-ranging reforms that resulted in high-quality, affordable and assessable aged care that met the needs and preferences of older Australians. Of course, part of our policy was to try to provide in-home care—that is, caring for the person in their home rather than sending them off to an aged-care facility. That began in 1997 with the Aged Care Act 1997. We went from there, and at the end of the Howard government’s term we were certainly very proud of the system that we had been able to deliver.

But where are we now? The industry is very different to what it was in 1997. The sector continues to evolve, as all sorts of sectors in Australia do. We can see the issues that are in the aged-care sector in relation to the issues that I find in my city of Townsville. The first issue is bed shortages. That impacts around the community but it also impacts on the local hospital. Right now, 22 beds in the Townsville Hospital are being taken up by older Australians who should be in an aged-care facility, but there are no places. The 22 beds are being taken up by people who are being cared for by the nursing system when they should be cared for in an aged-care facility. I encourage providers in Townsville to look at obtaining more bed licences and providing additional beds in the city.

The Good Shepherd Hospice, an existing aged-care provider, in cooperation with the Townsville Hospital, wants to provide an additional 36 places to clear the bed blockage. The state government, as I understand it, is prepared to contribute, but the federal government needs to contribute. At the last election there was a commitment from Senator McLucas, the senator who represents North Queensland, for the $2 million needed to build those beds, and there was a commitment from the Howard government as well. The hospice itself is going to put in a significant amount of money. So the commitments from the state government, the federal government and the aged-care facility itself are there but nothing is happening. It is not happening because the aged-care facility cannot get any clarity from the Rudd government as to when its $2 million will be delivered. That is a real shame.

The Good Shepherd Hospice is ready to go now, the hospital is ready to help, the state government is ready to help, but we are having difficulty with the Rudd government. I plead with the Rudd government: please honour your election commitment to provide that money. Please look after the people in Townsville who need that care and get them out of the hospital. Getting them out of the hospital will mean people will not have to sit on trolleys in the emergency ward. Relatively recently, a cancer patient was on a trolley in the emergency ward for such a length of time that they actually died in the corridor. That is a terrible standard of care in the hospital system, a very sad situation indeed, and it comes back to supporting the aged-care industry.

Many in the aged-care system are running on impossibly tight margins these days. I recently spoke to a number of operators in Townsville and they gave me the grassroots version of what is happening. One of their problems is that they cannot pay the staff what they need to pay them to keep them. Their staff are both enrolled nurses and registered nurses. A registered nurse in the aged-care industry in Queensland looks at what the Queensland government is paying registered nurses in the hospital system and says: ‘Why am I working in aged care? The hospital system pays a whole lot more money for the same job.’ So they go off to the hospital system.

The aged-care facilities have difficulty keeping their staff. They say to me: ‘We should look at the role of registered nurses in the aged-care system. Do we really need to have a registered nurse for many of the functions that are carried out in the care of older Australians?’ As a community we really do need to look at that because we have to keep the care up in the hospitals and in the aged-care homes. We really do need to look at whether we need qualified people doing jobs that less qualified people could do perfectly satisfactorily. I want to make quite clear that I am not for one moment suggesting that we should in any way prejudice quality care for older Australians. I am asking the aged-care industry and the government to look sensibly at which staff might do what jobs and what the requirements might be. There may be a way that we can get more staff back into the aged-care system and stop the leakage that is happening now to the hospital system.

I had another aged-care provider tell me that their home had been there for four decades and it was time to do a complete refresh. The provider said: ‘It is just not economically viable to do it. Why would I do it? It is going to cost too much money and there will be no return at the end of the day in investing that capital in a complete refresh. We need to be much larger than we are to make a refresh economic.’ That that might be happening in Townsville is of concern. And, if it is happening in Townsville, it is happening in every other city in the Commonwealth.

I have also been concerned that some of the administration that is needed these days in aged care is overwhelming the management and the staff of these facilities. Yes, we have to be careful about ensuring compliance with standards and we have to have the proper records, but I am advised by the aged-care industry that the paperwork these days is out of control. We ought to have a look at that with a view to freeing things up and seeing if we can do things in a smarter way that does not generate all of the paperwork that is there.

I specifically want to point to the RSL Rowes Bay aged-care facility in Townsville. I believe they have been very unfairly treated. Earlier this year there was a time when they did not meet some standards. That high-care RSL facility is as good as you would find anywhere in Australia. It is a wonderful place. It is first class and very new. They had a staffing problem at that time and that caused them a little bit of grief. They immediately overcame it when they saw there was a difficulty. But this has gone on. I saw in the paper last week that the RSL was named as one of the non-performing aged-care facilities in Queensland. That is terribly unfair. No allowance has been made for the work the good people and the management at that RSL aged-care facility have done to make sure that they are better than the standards that are required for the care of our older Australians. I hope there is some mechanism whereby we can address that kind of situation.

The government, to its credit, announced that it would be looking at having increased visits to aged-care facilities by the agency, the independent watchdog; increasing the powers of the agency; expanding the requirement for all aged-care employees to undergo police checks et cetera; investing in staff to check on both residents and paperwork in a facility; and filling in gaps in the legislation. But we can do more than that. I appeal to the government to look at the points I have raised in this speech tonight on the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 and to make those the subject of further legislation in due course to make the aged-care industry even more appropriate for the care of older Australians.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to speak to the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008, which is before the Main Committee. Before I start I want to say that the member for Herbert’s contribution was a very thoughtful contribution and he raised many very valid points. The difficulty, in terms of the hypothesis that was put forward by the member for Herbert, was that his criticisms of our current aged-care system lie squarely at the feet of the previous government. They oversaw the aged-care industry for over 12 years. The previous government made the changes that put in place the system that we have today.

The issues that the member for Herbert raised are indeed important ones; for example, the shortage of beds. A shortage of beds within 12 months of coming to government is clearly a responsibility of the previous government in failing to address the particular issue of shortages. One of the criticisms of the previous government, made by many commentators and many of the participants in the industry, was that there were so-called phantom beds. An allocation of beds went out to various providers, but it was often many years, if at all, until those allocations of beds became real beds that people could occupy. So the whole planning system, in terms of beds, by its very nature had a lag time, which the previous government did not look at addressing in any sense whatsoever.

The issue that the member for Herbert then went on to raise in relation to staff and pay is an issue that I was intimately involved in, having represented aged-care workers for 18 or 19 years. It was an issue that the previous government refused to look at; they did not look at it at all in terms of what they wanted to do with aged care. The member for Herbert, though, is right: what we need to do in aged care is look at other workforce models. Currently, 80 per cent of staff who are direct care staff are not registered nurses; they are either assistants in nursing, personal care assistants or enrolled nurses. So the vast majority already are not registered nurses. We need to look at the way in which those models work in a more efficient way to make sure that we can attract and retain properly skilled staff in the aged-care industry.

It is interesting to note that, despite a number of recommendations to the previous government, there are still no minimum qualifications for people working in aged care. While the vast majority of providers self-regulate and ensure that their aged-care workers are at least at the certificate III level, this is not mandatory at all. In fact, it is quite possible in an aged-care facility to have someone walk off the street one day and be caring for our elderly the next day. These are important issues that we need to address. With this piece of legislation, the Rudd government is starting to address some of the issues that have hindered and plagued aged care in this country for the last dozen or so years.

The member for Herbert raised the issue of aged-care facilities raising capital to renew their buildings and their structures. This issue is very much alive at the moment. I am certainly not advocating for an extension of bonds in the aged-care industry, but we do have the very anomalous situation of aged-care residents in low care being able to be charged a bond while those in high care are not able to be charged a bond. In their transition through aged care, people move from one level of care to the other and face completely different circumstances. This skews the way in which aged-care providers run their businesses and the type of residents they seek to attract. This is an issue that the previous government did not face, but it is a challenge that is before the Rudd government. We must make sure we adequately fund aged-care facilities for capital growth and capital infrastructure. There is an anomaly at the moment, and it is a challenge that is before this government given that the previous government chose to ignore that particular issue.

Another issue the member for Herbert raised was in relation to red tape. I wholeheartedly agree with the member for Herbert about the amount of red tape that exists in aged care, but I repeat that this is the system that the previous government put in place. This is the system of regulation that they decided was the best system to look after aged-care facilities and ensure quality care. Frankly, this has created a whole series of red tape that ties up staff without ensuring that quality aged care is being delivered in all of our aged-care facilities. To the great credit of the Minister for Ageing, in the first 12 months of government she has immediately increased the number of spot checks—because, frankly, she could not rely on the paperwork and the red tape to ensure that quality care was being delivered. What she needed to do—and did do—very decisively and very early on in taking over this portfolio was to make sure there was a massive increase in the number of spot checks and spot visits to aged-care facilities and that there would be people on the ground to see that quality care was being delivered. Having said that, red tape is a real issue and it is one that this government will need to look at and address properly. We need to ensure that we are not unnecessarily tying up resources and that we are putting in place a system that measures the quality of care rather than measuring how someone fills out the paperwork.

In Australia we need to have adequate and effective regulatory safeguards to ensure that our older citizens are afforded high-quality care. Unfortunately the current legislation is inadequate, and that is why we need to change it through, in the first instance, the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Aged Care Act 1997 and the Aged Care (Bond Security) Act 2006. These amendments will address some of the current legislative inadequacies. They will also maintain effective regulatory safeguards. In particular, the proposed amendments will link ‘approved provider status’ to the allocation of aged-care places—those directly linked to Commonwealth funding; modernise the legislation so that it better aligns with contemporary business practice and applies to all approved providers regardless of their corporate structure; streamline assessments of frail older Australians to ensure more timely and consistent quality assessments; ensure that any accommodation bonds or similar payments made by frail older Australians for entry to aged-care services are fully protected under the accommodation bond guarantee scheme; and make some minor operational changes to improve the administration of the legislation so that it operates more efficiently and effectively.

We have some tremendous aged-care facilities in this country. I am privileged to have in the seat of Dobell, on the Central Coast, some of Australia’s best aged-care facilities. I recently had the pleasure of attending the opening of a brand-new, state-of-the-art aged-care facility in the suburb of Kanwal, in my electorate. I was very pleased to have the Minister for Ageing attend the opening with me. We were able to see firsthand what a cutting-edge aged-care facility should look like. In this particular facility, each room has a huge computer screen that takes away the necessity for a lot of the paperwork that the member for Herbert was talking about. When an aged-care worker comes to look after a resident, they immediately go to the screen and fill out the forms there. There is no need to fill out laborious paperwork. There is an immediate response; it goes back to a central server. If key indicators are not filled out, there is notification to the director of nursing in the facility and she makes sure that remedial action is taken immediately in relation to the care of the particular resident. That sort of state-of-the-art aged-care facility is the sort of aged-care facility that we are going to see throughout Australia. It is one that I was very pleased to visit, to see the way in which aged care has developed and changed. I am very happy that we have such a facility in my electorate.

While we were at William Cape Gardens, we presented community service awards to two very deserving people who are part of that facility in Kanwal. One was Cheryl Wright, who is a staff member. I want to mention Cheryl for the tremendous work she has done and the contribution she has made there for years. The other was a resident called Lindsay Rose. Lindsay plays a very important role in this aged-care facility, one that is important in terms of the way in which aged care should operate in the future. While Lindsay is a resident there, he also helps people who suffer from dementia. He has helped assemble in the aged-care facility a men’s shed, which has a whole range of tools. Lindsay helps organise the other residents to do some carpentry there to keep their minds active as well as interact in a social situation. It is important that the Minister for Ageing was able to recognise the work of Lindsay Rose and the work that this particular aged-care facility does.

There are two other aged-care facilities that I wish to mention today. One is the Legacy Hostel at Norah Head, which is a small facility but one that is superbly run. Testament to that is that a longstanding former member for the state seat of Wyong, Mr Harry Moore, is a resident there and a very happy one. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would know that politicians can sometimes be fairly demanding in making sure that they are getting the best deal they possibly can, and it is a testament to the hostel that Mr Harry Moore is very happy there. The Legacy Hostel at Norah Head is a marvellous aged-care facility. I have also visited Our Lady of Loreto Gardens, in Hamlyn Terrace, on a number of occasions. It is a new aged-care facility which is doing some great work with older Australians.

The last facility in my electorate that I wanted to mention today was Nareen Warnervale. The provider—Colin Macdonald is the name of the manager there—is doing a great job in terms of building a special-purpose garden for the dementia patients. The garden has cars in it, with radios that work, and a whole range of facilities to stimulate the minds of the dementia patients who live in this facility. This is really cutting-edge work that is being done, and the facility is looking at having a proper study done on the effects of this garden on dementia patients. It is not only making their lives more bearable in relation to the affliction that they suffer from but also delaying some of the symptoms. So they are just some of the quality aged-care facilities that we have on the Central Coast.

Aged care is an area that has many, many challenges, and this government will face many, many challenges in dealing with the ageing population and the system that we have inherited, including some of the problems that the member for Herbert outlined that have been left for this government to try and fix up—and we need to do that. One particular area that we need to look at is staffing levels and how to not only attract adequate staff to these aged-care facilities but also ensure that a provider can afford to pay for enough staff so that quality care is delivered.

Aged care in the United States is never put up as an example of a perfect system; in fact, it is usually used to describe how good another country’s aged-care system is by comparison. But it is interesting to note that, even in the United States, 32 of the states have now regulated through state legislation minimum staffing levels that need to be reached in relation to their aged-care facilities. That is because, following an extensive congressional inquiry, they worked out that the number of people who are there to look after aged-care facility residents has a direct relationship to the quality of care those residents get.

This is something that the previous Australian government chose to ignore, despite the fact that in 2004 an extensive Senate committee inquiry took place, resulting in recommendations. And those recommendations were bipartisan; there was no minority report. The recommendations that were made were unanimous, and included putting in place some way of making sure that we had a floor on the number of staff that could work in an aged-care facility. What did the previous government do, even though their own senators had made this recommendation? They did nothing—nothing at all. They did not even make a response to the Senate committee inquiry, an inquiry that made a whole range of recommendations. Those recommendations were made post the Hogan report, which cost a lot of money and made a whole series of recommendations, most of which were ignored by the previous government. There was then the Senate committee inquiry into aged care generally. It also made a series of recommendations, which were bipartisan—recommendations with unanimous support from both the major parties and, in fact, the Democrats; so minor parties were there as well—and the report did not even get a response from the then minister for ageing. They did not even respond to it; they put it on a shelf and forgot about it.

So for the member for Herbert to come in here and say that there are failings on the part of the Rudd government after 12 months for the way in which we have dealt with aged care is the height of hypocrisy. The previous government had 12 years in which they could have done something about the very problems that he was raising, and they are legitimate problems. They received recommendations during their time in government to address these particular issues, but they chose not to respond. So, when they come into this place and talk about their sympathy for the residents of aged-care facilities and what should be done, they do not come into this place with clean hands. They come into this place with a track record in relation to dealing with aged care that no-one would be proud of.

We have seen the Rudd government start to reform the aged-care process with the legislation that is before us today. Through the increase in the number of spot visits to aged-care facilities that take place we have seen that this government puts a concern for the quality of care that is being delivered to the residents right at the heart of its aged-care system. This is in stark contrast to what we had from the previous government, which chose to ignore these issues totally.

The issue of aged care is a difficult one and it is one that increasingly is going to take more resources and more government time as the population grows older and more people need to avail themselves of residential services. It is an area that we cannot walk away from and that we need to address. One thing I am very pleased about is that this government, despite the difficulties of the system we have inherited and the various problems that need to be addressed, has said squarely: ‘We are there for aged-care residents. We are there to make sure that we are going to have a viable industry. We are there to make sure that providers are able to continue to do the work they do. We are going to put the residents front and centre of an aged-care system that makes sure they are looked after properly.’ I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge, for the member for Dobell, the wonderful facilities in his electorate that he has spoken about, but I will also quietly remind him that in regional areas it is a huge challenge to provide the types of facilities that he and his constituents have access to.

I rise to speak on the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. This bill does not go far enough in addressing the serious state the aged-care industry is in because of growth in the numbers of Australians who will need residential aged care. It does not encourage the necessary ongoing, continuous investment required to meet the demand. With an average return on a high-care bed in a modern facility at 1.1 per cent, it is no wonder the industry is in crisis and unable to attract investors. This bill merely updates regulatory safeguards in a half-hearted attempt to provide some confidence to the aged-care system but actually offers nothing in a practical sense. In many areas, confidence has already left the industry, and clearly the Labor government has failed to address the serious state the aged-care industry is in.

Aged-care funding in my electorate of Forrest over the 2006-07 year totalled over $34.5 million. Currently, there are 17 residential care facilities, offering 399 high-care beds and 566 low-care beds, located in Harvey, Collie, Eaton, Bunbury, Donnybrook, Nannup, Busselton, Bridgetown, Manjimup and Margaret River. Three multipurpose services in Nannup, Augusta and Pemberton offer 25 high-care, 29 low-care and nine community care places. Two specific dementia facilities offer seven community care places in Bunbury and Busselton. Nine organisations offer 246 community care places in Busselton, Margaret River, Collie, Bunbury, Donnybrook and Manjimup, and two extended aged-care at-home services offer 17 community care places through Strelley Grange Home Care in Busselton and Silver Chain Bunbury/South West. These facilities service a total of 1,298 people.

In Forrest there are 17,981 people aged over 65, with 1,874 people aged over 85. It has been reported that half of the 2.8 million Australians aged over 65 will require some sort of assistance with their everyday activities. This means around 9,000 Forrest residents will require the services of one of the roughly 1,300 places available including community, low and high care. Ensuring strong growth in aged-care places is essential to providing a healthy, enjoyable and safe retirement for the general population of Australia.

WA has a unique set of circumstances, clearly not recognised by the Labor government—or is it simply because we have a Liberal-National state government in WA? I note a letter in the West Australian newspaper from Ray Glickman, CEO of Amana Living. He said:

Sometimes it seems that Canberra is a world away rather than just on the other side of our continent.

The impacts here on the elderly of the resources boom and associated rampant inflation go unrecognised or are just ignored by the Federal Government.

Your newspaper has shone a light on the immediate hardships being suffered by elderly pensioners, but if anything, the long-term prospects for these same people in terms of care and services are even more alarming.

The letter went on to say:

Despite their best efforts, aged-care providers in this State can no longer afford to develop new care beds or even keep open all the ones they currently have. While the true inflation rate for aged-care services is running at 8-9 per cent, Federal funding increases are at 4 percent at best. Construction costs for new beds are now running at more than double the income that is provided by the Government to pay for them. This situation is clearly now of crisis proportions

Mr Glickman also stated:

WA is currently 2000 care beds short of Government targets, with this number set to increase rapidly in the face of aged population growth.

One of the major issues facing the aged-care industry is the large number of providers that are operating at a loss, which is threatening the sector, clearly demonstrated in Mr Glickman’s letter. High care is the area most in need of assistance, as it is quickly becoming the area companies are least likely to upgrade, with 40 per cent of high-care operators running at a loss while, at the same time, being forecast as the type of care to experience the most growth over the coming years as Australians use fewer low-care options, instead utilising the growing community care facilities prior to making the move into high-care residential living.

For the first time ever, the profitability of the aged-care sector has fallen sharply, demonstrated by the undersubscription of places in Tasmania and Western Australia, despite robust competition for places. The release of the Grant Thornton Aged Care Survey 2008 predicts a dire future for aged care in Australia. Average earnings for aged-care providers have declined by 10 per cent in just one year according to the 2008 National Residential Aged Care Survey. In 2007, aged-care facilities were returning an average of $3,211 per bed. This figure has declined to $2,934 in 2008. High-care beds in particular performed exceptionally poorly, with modern, high-care, single-bedroom facilities averaging a return of just $2,191 per bed this year. That is a return of just 1.1 per cent on these facilities, and it is not surprising that companies are scrapping or postponing upgrade plans.

The survey highlights that declining earnings and increased construction costs have prevented the redevelopment of many aged-care facilities that are themselves ageing—and in country areas, ageing significantly. The viability of the aged-care sector is under serious threat as the government continues to ignore the very basic incentives needed to encourage investment in modern aged-care facilities. I am concerned that, as the Grant Thornton survey reported:

The regulatory and pricing framework now threatens the viability of the aged care sector by suppressing incentives to invest in modern aged care infrastructure.

This decline in investment severely limits choice for consumers of aged care services.

The last thing we need in an environment where we will soon be experiencing very high ratios of retired residents to working residents is a limited choice in aged-care services, particularly high-care services. What is even more alarming is that this dramatic fall in return on investment has coincided with growing demand for aged-care services which has forced some aged-care consumers onto the state hospital system. This is a most worrying trend. If the industry remains static or declines, our public hospitals will not be able to cope with having to provide aged care, not to mention the predicted half a million extra people who will be forced onto overflowing public hospital waiting lists as a result of the amendment to the Medicare levy surcharge.

Given that, in 44 per cent of aged-care facilities surveyed by Grant Thornton, the buildings—the actual bricks and mortar—are currently over 20 years old, I have grave concerns. I urge the government to take the action necessary to ensure investment in aged-care, particularly high-care, facilities so they remain viable and do not fall behind demand. This will ensure that Australians living in residential care facilities enjoy comfortable, safe, modern facilities and are not left with either inferior service or nowhere to go.

Equally important is ensuring that residents have a high quality of life when in aged care. The Aged Care Survey 2008 indicated there were concerns in the industry that budget constraints and poor financial performance of both small and large service providers was not only leading to poor quality facilities but also resulting in reductions in recreation and lifestyle activities. Our elderly Australians deserve to be able to have a good quality of life, a range of activities to enjoy, caring aged-care workers, and access to health and personal support services in their aged-care facility.

In recent years there has been a large shift in the structure of the companies that own and run aged-care facilities. As corporations have moved into the market, the status quo of aged-care facilities being small operations where the owner has significant influence over the day-to-day running of the facility has shifted to one where the owners of aged-care facilities—effectively the shareholders of such firms as Babcock and Brown, AMP and Macquarie Bank—are completely removed from the management of the facility. Effectively they are commercially driven and managed enterprises. Production costs have risen substantially over a very short space of time, encouraging firms to turn away from prospective expansions. Add to this the shrinking proportion of government subsidies and an acute shortage of nurses—problems shared by all in the health sector—and it is no wonder we find ourselves discussing the aged-care industry. Providers are handing back bed licences and decisions have been made at provider board level not to apply for further places unless there is structural reform to the industry. A number of providers are closing beds.

All this comes while demand for aged-care facilities is set to increase over the coming years with the number of over 85-year-olds, the demographic most likely to demand high care, set to increase fourfold from 400,000 to over 1.6 million over the next 40 years. The recent Productivity Commission research paper Trends in aged care services: some implications also predicts a significant rise in demand for aged-care services over the coming 40 years. If I were an aged-care operator, I would be very worried. With the government refusing to guarantee an adequate income stream past the 2009 budget for aged-care facilities, there is very little to encourage providers to invest in new facilities or to improve their services or existing facilities.

I am most concerned that Australia’s aged-care system will not be able to meet future challenges. These issues stem from aged-care providers recognising the unsustainable financial situation they find themselves in and needing to make commercial decisions. Since coming into government, Labor has ignored older Australians. It has undermined the aged-care industry and the dedicated employees who take care of our senior members by refusing to commit to time lines or concrete targets—therefore not providing the Australian people with any confidence. This is another example of their watching approach.

I looked at the MYEFO figures, the government’s economic mismanagement and bungling of the guarantee on bank deposits, and their failure to factor the current economic position into the emissions trading scheme modelling. I look at the education revolution and the additional costs to the states and I look at the national broadband network. In my area that is still to happen. But I have news for the government. The aged-care companies will not just watch; they will simply not invest if the government does not provide certainty. They will walk away and they will not invest in the aged-care sector or provide care to our elderly population. I will be very interested to see whether the 1,500 new places on offer will be taken up in the next round. With the older population set to make up nearly a third of our total population—more than double the current percentage—the Prime Minister will be held to account.

The previous government introduced significant changes to the aged-care sector as part of the 2007-08 budget. Many of these changes, such as the Aged Care Funding Instrument, have been retained by the current government, and peak bodies have expressed relief that there were no significant cuts to the aged-care sector in this government’s first budget. The conditional adjustment payment was introduced as part of the previous government’s initial response to the report of Professor Warren Hogan’s Review of pricing arrangements in residential aged care. The amount of CAP payable in respect of a resident is calculated as a percentage of the basic subsidy amount payable in respect of a resident. In 2004-05, the year of its introduction, this percentage was 1.75 per cent. It then rose annually in 1.75 per cent increments to 3.5 per cent in 2005-06; 5.25 per cent in 2006-07; and 7.0 per cent in 2007-08.

With the threat of a cut to aged-care funding in the budget, the Prime Minister intervened at the last moment—actually the Sunday before the budget—and provided indexation to the CAP subsidy of 1.75 per cent to continue for one year only. It was therefore continued and maintained by the new government and announced in its 2008-09 budget. With indexation to the CAP subsidy increasing by the same increment of 1.75 per cent, the CAP level was lifted to 8.75 per cent. Discontinuing the indexation of CAP would have sent some aged-care providers to the wall, adding to the 40 per cent in the sector already operating at a loss.

It was also disappointing that the budget did not make any meaningful contribution towards addressing the significant health workforce challenges. An extra 1,000 nurses over five years in the residential aged-care sector will do little to address the declining workforce and the pay disparities in the sector or the broader challenges facing the aged-care workforce. A research paper by the Productivity Commission released last month forecast that the number of Australians over 85 years would quadruple to 1.6 million and that governments would need to spend $450 million each year to ensure aged-care nurses were paid the same as hospital nursing staff.

The previous coalition government placed significant emphasis on wide-ranging reforms to deliver a high-quality, affordable and accessible aged-care system that understood the needs and preferences of older Australians. The reforms began in 1997 when the Aged Care Act 1997 and the Aged Care Principles introduced a unified residential care and payments system and a national quality assurance framework for residential aged care, combining accreditation, certification and the Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme. These measures gave the community greater confidence in the quality of care, services and standards of accommodation and protected the rights of older Australians. The coalition places significant importance on older Australians having access to high-quality aged care.

Since the act came into effect in 1997, the industry has matured significantly. The setting in 2008 is significantly different from what existed in 1997, with the sector evolving into multisite, multistate, multiservice operations using complex financial and legal arrangements. The previous coalition government’s substantial commitment to the aged-care sector is demonstrated by the increase in the total number of operational aged-care places. In December 2006, this represented a 48 per cent increase compared to Labor’s previous policies in 1996. There was a 21 per cent increase in residential care places, a 795 per cent increase in community care places and our total aged-care funding was just on 100 per cent more than Labor’s 1996 figures. The previous federal government also provided funding for nursing homes to install clinical and patient management systems that help in the sharing of information between residential care providers, hospitals and general practitioners.

The ageing of our population is the biggest social issue that Australia faces and it will present considerable budgetary pressures. The Australian government’s spending on health is projected to increase as a proportion of GDP from 3.8 per cent in 2006-07 to 7.3 per cent in 2046-47. The growth of real GDP per person is projected to slow because of the ageing of the population and increasing life spans. Spending on health and aged care is projected to grow significantly over the next 40 years due to improved drugs and medical technologies.

Australia is facing a demographic shift. Australians now have one of the world’s longest life expectancy rates in the world. At present, Centrelink is the agency which determines an aged-care recipient’s financial status for the payment of bonds et cetera. Industry has reservations about this power being conferred on the Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing, who may attempt to extend capping bonds for other aged-care residents.

The bill widens the powers of the department to enable it to impose sanctions on behalf of future aged-care residents and to allow it to impose sanctions to act as a deterrent on future noncompliance. Because of the subjective nature of these provisions, it would be difficult to argue against an appeal. The act currently has considerable powers to impose sanctions and revocation of licences. These provisions introduce unnecessary uncertainty and complexity into the act. In practical terms, what concerns me most, and what lies at the heart of this legislation, is the capacity to deliver a high-quality, well-serviced, caring environment for our aged citizens. For both the residents and their families, there is an absolute imperative to know that the quality of care is the very best possible. So often, one of the hardest decisions loving family members have to make is the decision to have their parent or grandparent enter an aged-care facility. Not only do they want their parent or grandparent in good facilities, they also want to know they are being genuinely cared for, and their needs respected and understood, by those who look after them. They want their loved ones to have access to the best possible allied health services they need, a range of activities and entertainment, and a quality of life in the aged-care facility. The national head of aged-care services at Grant Thornton, Cam Ansell, is quoted in the WA Business News as saying that:

Although the cost of building and operating modern facilities is much higher than running older-style shared room accommodation, the current funding model does not provide additional compensation for operators that meet consumer demands for privacy and dignity.

At the same time, Aged Care Association Australia’s chief executive, Rod Young, said that ‘the federal government’s $10.4 billion economic stimulus package ignored the frail elderly’ and described the future of Australian aged-care services as ‘grim’. (Time expired)

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Aged Care Act 1997 and the Aged Care (Bond Security) Act 2006 to address current legislative inadequacies and to maintain effective regulatory safeguards for ensuring high-quality care for older Australians. The bill is part of a package of reforms designed to ensure that the approximately one-quarter of a million frail, older Australians who are in residential care, or who receive community care services in their homes, receive high-quality care. It further ensures that the often significant sums of money paid by care recipients are managed responsibly, and that the regulatory framework is robust.

In particular, the proposed amendments: firstly, link approved provider status to the allocation of aged-care places directly linked to Commonwealth funding; secondly, modernise the legislation so that it better aligns with contemporary business practice and applies to all approved providers regardless of their corporate structure; thirdly, streamline assessments of frail older Australians to ensure more timely, consistent and quality assessments; and fourthly, ensure that any accommodation bonds or like payments paid by frail, older Australians for entry into aged-care services are fully protected under the Accommodation Bond Guarantee Scheme, and make some more minor operational changes to improve the administration of the legislation so that it operates more efficiently and effectively.

This bill is an important part of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to delivering to those people who rely on a strong and fair aged-care industry. The changes implemented by the bill will see significant net benefits to all stakeholders. In terms of cost, some of these measures are likely to result in small initial implementation costs to the aged-care industry while other measures are expected to lead to efficiencies in savings.

The changes outlined in the bill have been the subject of consultation with the aged-care sector through the Ageing Consultative Committee. This comprises peak industry, professional and consumer bodies. Committee members also consulted more broadly, distributing a consultation paper prepared by the Department of Health and Ageing. Written submissions were received from stakeholders and informed the development and finetuning of the complex legislative and policy reform processes.

The Rudd Labor government are proud of the level of consultation we have with our stakeholders and communities, especially the seniors community. Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of receiving in the electorate of Dawson the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot. She came to Mackay, where we held an aged-care forum with representatives from all aged-care stakeholder groups in the electorate—such as the CEO and general manager of the Good Shepherd Lodge, the CEO and general manager of Resthaven, the leaders of the Homefield Aged Persons Home and Sister Pauline from the Francis of Assisi Home. We also had leaders of nursing homes in Proserpine and Sarina with us there, in the electorate of Dawson. It was a small group of peak operators and decision makers sitting down face to face with the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliott.

During my consultations, I spent a lot of time getting together with the peak operators of the aged-care industry in the electorate of Dawson. They called upon me very early in the election cycle to have a meeting with the Minister for Ageing, so it was particularly pleasing for me to have Justine Elliott come to Mackay and enable that to happen within our first year in government. Those operators were excited and ecstatic at the reception they received and comforted that their concerns, highly detailed and well explained, were able to be expressed in an atmosphere very conducive to good, positive and constructive discussion. I know from speaking to the Minister for Ageing after that process how edifying she personally found it and that she found the participants’ commentary very positive and constructive. I know that the minister has taken a lot of what they said seriously and on board in her assessment of the situation.

Something which has also pleased many of the people in the aged-care industry is the Rudd Labor government’s leadership in deciding to inject $10.4 billion into the economy. Part of that is giving $1,400 to each single elderly person and $2,100 to couples. As you would know, in aged-care facilities there are many contractual business arrangements whereby up to 85 per cent of any additions to the aged-care pension may be taken from the person in the home. This government made a very clear decision, and that was to give a 100 per cent lump sum which will be going out on 8 December 2008 to the elderly folk across this nation. They will benefit from it directly 100 per cent. There will be no deductions by anybody as it passes from government to the individuals concerned. And that is going to be really good news for our elderly people, who will be able and empowered to spend that money as they choose, or, if they wish, to save it. They will be able to buy presents for their families, to buy those things which they have never been able to afford before or perhaps to give something back to those who spent many years caring for them before they went into an aged-care home. So I think it is a very positive thing.

While the minister was in Mackay, in the seat of Dawson, the minister’s visit marked the recognition of a senior citizen, Lynn Howland. She was honoured by the federal government with a plaque presented by the minister at a large gathering of senior citizens. I would like to take some time to recognise volunteers such as Lynn Howland, who have spent a lifetime serving other people. She truly did deserve this plaque. Mrs Howland is currently chairman of the Mackay District Senior Citizens Club. She has held the position for seven years and was vice-chairman for three years before that. Lynn is at the centre nearly every time the club is open for activities unless her other community commitments force her to be absent while she is at another meeting or activity.

The club is open five days a week for 48 weeks of the year—except for the dances, which continue all year round. The club has the following activities weekly. On Sunday they have indoor bowls from 1 pm to 4.30 pm. On Monday they have indoor bowls from 7 pm to 10 pm, and on Tuesday they have cards, craft and indoor bowls from 8 am to 11 am, and indoor bowls from 1 pm to 4.30 pm. On Thursday they have cards and indoor bowls and, on the third week of the month, either a cent sale or a concert. On Saturdays they have dancing from 7.30 to 11.30. Generally, Lynn Howland is at the Mackay centre for the night. Monthly, the club has, on Saturdays, cards from 1.30 to 4.30 and on Sundays they have barbecues from 6.30 to 10 pm. Yearly activities include things like morning tea for residents from aged-care homes in September. Entertainment is also provided. They have balls twice a year, Hogmanay on New Year’s Eve, concerts three times a year—which Lynn convenes—and other clubs are invited for a night of social bowls four times a year.

Lynn is constantly on the lookout for funding to assist the club with finances so that the costs can be kept down for seniors. Recently she submitted applications to the Gambling Community Benefit Fund, the Volunteer Grants Program, the Q150 Community Funding Program and the Community of the Year award.

In 2008 Lynn arranged a charity concert to assist the Mackay North Primary School, as they had been severely flooded in the February 2008 floods that hit Mackay. This school often assists the senior citizens with the concerts by performing the first half of the entertainment. I must say that just last week, on Thursday, I was at the senior citizens hall and I heard the Mackay North Primary School band. They were absolutely delightful, well orchestrated and very well disciplined. They brought great joy to the many elderly people who were there, and gave a fantastic performance.

During Seniors Week each year Mrs Howland has been instrumental in arranging activities for seniors in the district. For the last five years this has included working with two other groups—the NSA Mackay branch and 50 and Better—to host a sausage sizzle and entertainment morning to launch Seniors Week. This event has non-stop entertainment from 9 am till 12.30 pm. She has arranged with Mirani Shire Council to host an afternoon tea for seniors in the district, to be arranged by the youth group up there.

Mrs Howland also presented an honour posthumously to a dedicated volunteer of South Sea Islander descent. She also arranged for open days for senior citizens clubs to enable the general public to visit and learn what they are about. Lynn also arranged with the committee a morning tea for the members. She helped host a mystery bus trip and invited the prep grade children to visit during one of the mornings to have them entertain and sing and then have a game of indoor bowls before morning tea.

Mrs Lynn Howland has made other significant contributions, including being president of the National Seniors Australia Mackay Branch, which involves monthly meetings, lunches and bus trips. Lynn was president from 1998 to 2003 and has been again since 2005. She is also the zone 104 committee chairman for National Seniors Australia, which involves meetings and chairing conferences between Mackay in the south and Cairns in the north. She has held that position since 2002 and it also involves meetings in Brisbane.

So, as you can see, Mrs Lynn Howland has been extremely busy. She was also the Mackay Whitsunday representative on the Queensland Seniors Council from 2005 to 2007. In 2008 and 2009 she will be involved in meetings in Brisbane and local areas, workshops, planning meetings, a forum in Brisbane, interagency meetings in various towns and speaking by invitation to other groups and service providers. Lynn was a guest forum presenter at the Moranbah Ministerial Regional Community Forum. Mrs Lynn Howland is also a member of the Senior Safety working group in Mackay, which meets monthly. Lynn was a member of the Active Ageing working group in the Mackay and Mirannie area, which met monthly during 2006-07.

The Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, came to Mackay and honoured Mrs Lynn Howland, who has been incredibly busy and has tirelessly worked as a volunteer for all of these aged-care groups. Indeed, she should be highly recognised. I am proud to know her. She did lobby me very hard when I went to the AGM of the 50 and Better group in Mackay. Even though I am not 50 until next May, she made me an honorary member. I thought that was very kind of her. With tears in her eyes, she grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes and said, ‘Please, James, tell Wayne Swan when you see him how grateful we are for the way that he is helping the elderly in this area.’ I told Wayne that and he was most grateful to hear that direct from Lynn.

It is expected that a number of the changes outlined in the bill we are talking about here will benefit care recipients and their families by, for example, strengthening the protection of bonds paid, streamlining assessment of care recipients and generally improving the framework designed to protect the health, welfare and other interests of care recipients. In recent years there has been significant growth in the value of accommodation bonds held by aged-care providers. As at 30 June 2007 around 970 approved providers—75 per cent of all approved providers—held accommodation bonds, with a total value of $6.3 billion. It is obviously extremely important in terms of consumer confidence and to maintain and increase the level of corporate investment in the sector that the regulatory framework that governs these financial arrangements is as robust and current as possible. In addition, feedback from the sector clearly reflects a level of dissatisfaction—

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be an order of the day for the next sitting. The member for Dawson will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed on a future day.