Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill introduces several minor amendments to aged-care and health related legislation consequential to one 2014 budget measure and to support the recent extensive reforms to the aged-care system in Australia.

Reprioritising the Aged Care Workforce Supplement

The coalition committed during the 2013 election campaign to deliver better services for older Australians and greater certainty for providers.

The 2014 budget included several important aged-care initiatives to provide better choices and improved access to services that will allow older Australians to continue to live active and healthy lives.

Under one key budget measure, Reprioritising the Aged Care Workforce Supplement, the government is honouring its commitment to invest in Australia’s aged-care workforce by putting back into the general pool of aged-care funding the substantial amounts previously allocated to the workforce compact: $1.1 billion between 2013-14 and 2016-17, with a further $0.4 billion in 2017-18.

This initiative, under which residential-care, home-care and flexible-care providers of aged-care services receive an increase in basic subsidy, was implemented separately from 1 July 2014, through two legislative instruments addressing the subsidy arrangements.

This bill makes consequential amendments to the Aged Care Act 1997 to reflect the implementation of the budget measure. Specifically, this bill removes the workforce supplement from the list of primary supplements that may be provided by the subsidy principles under the act.

My Aged Care

A second measure in the bill amends the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 to support the implementation of stage 2 of the aged-care gateway, which is a centralised online information portal known as My Aged Care.

Stage 1 of My Aged Care was introduced from1 July 2013. It currently provides information on aged care, support for consumers in finding Commonwealth-funded aged-care services in their local area, and online fee estimators for home-care and residential-care pricing.

Stage 2 of My Aged Care will operate from early 2015, and is a key component of the improvements to Australia’s aged-care system. My Aged Care will be expanded to include:

A client’s identity created during the new registration process will be authenticated, using Medicare’s health-care identifier for the individual. This approach will protect both client privacy and the integrity of Commonwealth systems.

The amendments in this bill will allow the collection, use and disclosure of the relevant data for this limited purpose.

Recovery of past home care costs for a compensation recipient

This bill, together with the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Care Charges (Amendment) Bill 2014, amend the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Act 1995 and the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Care Charges Act 1995 to overcome a current anomaly in the legislation relating to the recovery of past care costs where the care recipient receives a compensation payment.

Recovery in these circumstances is currently possible in relation to the past costs of residential care, but not home care. This anomaly is removed by bringing the capacity to recover past care costs for home care into line with the existing arrangements for residential care.

The amendments remove the current inequity between the two types of care, overcome the potential for delayed entry into more appropriate residential care until compensation payments are settled, and minimise financial loss to the Commonwealth.

Other amendments

Lastly, this bill makes a minor clarifying and technical amendment to aged-care and health related legislation, consistent with intended policy, arising from the recent changes to aged care. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.