Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Saturday marks 100 days since the Assistant Minister for Social Services announced he was axing the dementia and severe behaviours supplement—a $16.15 a day supplement paid to aged-care providers to address the additional care needs of those residents exhibiting severe behaviours due to conditions such as dementia. One hundred days later the government still has no idea what it wants to do. What we have learnt this week from documents that Ageing Agenda obtained under freedom of information is that this government has spent its entire first year neglecting aged care. The department's minutes and correspondence report highlighted the gross negligence and inaction of the Minister for Social Services and his assistant minister, even in the face of advice from the department.

The Abbott government was informed on 4 February 2014 that there was an oversubscription to the dementia and severe behaviours supplement. A review was meant to be undertaken and peak bodies were meant to have been contacted. To date I am not aware of any peak body that has received correspondence informing it that there is a problem or that a review is underway. Somehow the Treasurer released a budget in May 2014 that did not even address this issue. The assistant minister was informed that there were implementation issues with the supplement. Training was neglected. Compliance and validation concerns were not addressed. Suddenly, there was an apparent tenfold oversubscription—or so we are told.

To date the government has released no official costings or any report on the issues surrounding the supplement. The assistant minister did pledge to address the issue and implement both interim and ongoing measures. One hundred days later all we have seen is a forum, which is not due to report until 'sometime in October', according to the assistant minister. The Abbott government has no interest in aged care, let alone dementia and the issues surrounding those older people in residential aged care who exhibit severe and sometimes violent behaviours as a result of their condition.

It may have been 100 days since the government announced they were axing the supplement, but it has been about nine months since the minister learnt there was an issue and 13 months since the government took responsibility for the implementation of this supplement, which began just one month before they took over. Nowhere in the department's own papers does it say that this supplement was badly designed or bad policy. No, it was not a design problem; it was an implementation problem. You cannot have a new instrument introduced and let it roll out with no oversight, no monitoring and no accountability.

The Abbott government has been in office for more than one year and yet it has shirked its responsibility to people in aged care suffering from the impacts of dementia. After the budget and after aged-care providers had made their budgets, hired their staff and finalised their forward plans, this government hit them with the axing of the dementia and severe behaviours supplement. The assistant minister rails against the cost of addressing the issue but happily he supports the Prime Minister giving wealthy women $50,000 to have a baby. The Paid Parental Leave scheme will cost $20 billion across the forward estimates. On the one hand $110 million for those people with the most severe dementia and behaviour problems is not funded by this government and on the other hand the government is paying $20 billion across the forward estimates for millionaires to have babies.

The treatment of older Australians and the wonderful agencies that provide care for them when they are at their most vulnerable by this government has been shocking and disgraceful. The report card that the Prime Minister, his minister and the Assistant Minister for Social Services will receive from the Australian people will reflect—in my opinion—their inattention, their inaction and their incompetence. I call on this government to have a look at this issue, to deal with the peak bodies, to deal with the clinicians, to deal with the experts in this field—the same experts who advised us in devising the supplement in the first place—and to do their jobs. I urge the minister to restore this supplement, not to neglect aged care and to have more than one adviser in the assistant minister's office who deals with aged care. I urge the Prime Minister to appoint in this parliament and in this government a minister for ageing with cabinet status, as recommended in the Blueprint for an ageing Australiaby Everald Compton and Brian Howe.

I urge this government to restore the dementia and severe behaviours supplement appropriately or come up with a proper alternative. Listen to the voice of the aged-care sector. Stop slugging them with cuts, as the budget did. Listen to the voice of the providers, who are at the coalface. Restore the dementia and severe behaviours supplement. It should be a government of no surprises and no excuses, because that is what government members went around the countryside saying it would be—a government of no surprises and no excuses. In the area of ageing and aged care, what has this government delivered? Surprise cuts after surprise cuts after surprise cuts. It is a government that has no interest in the sector and no interest in those people suffering the most severe ailments that can possibly be imagined. Vulnerable people deserve better in this country. (Time expired)