Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Imagine that you are 85 years of age, living at home and struggling with a neurological illness. You lost your husband just over a year ago and you've been the carer for your son, who is in his 50s and who has an acquired brain injury, for the past 17 years. It is getting harder and harder to maintain your home and to care for your son.

Recently, a constituent of mine contacted my office seeking assistance with My Aged Care. She had been assessed more than four months previously for a level 3 package and had been told that it would be at least 12 months before she would receive additional services. She feels that a small amount of extra assistance would help greatly in her capacity to continue to manage her home. Close to the end of her tether, she gets very upset about the future, not only in terms of her own care but her son's care. She worries about her son's future and the heavy weight of possibility that if she cannot continue at home her son will also need to go into a much more expensive care arrangement.

This is not a unique situation. In Victoria alone there are some 23,000 people on the waiting list for home-care packages. More than half of those on the waiting list in Victoria are waiting for a level 3 or 4 home-care package—the highest level of care. It was revealed earlier this month in Senate estimates that the average waiting time for level 3 and 4 is over 12 months. The situation has, frankly, reached breaking point and is no longer tolerable for frail, older Australians or their families.

Another example that has been through my office is that of the daughter of a man in his 90s who is fiercely independent and living in his own home. A recent fall meant that he spent a small amount of time in hospital with broken ribs. As his family attempted to identify services that might ease his return home, the difficulty in accessing immediate support became very real. The family experienced substantial heartache as they spent many hours trying to negotiate an unwieldy system, drawing together ad hoc providers to ameliorate the potentially negative effects of a return home from hospital care and the scarcity of services.

Those are two constituent examples that I have had in my office of late. I hear similar anecdotes from many others who find the current system unyielding, inflexible, impersonal and frustrating. The latest data on the Turnbull government's waiting lists has revealed there are close on 105,000 vulnerable older Australians waiting for home-care packages. Of these 105,000 people waiting for care, nearly 82,000 are waiting with high needs, many of them with dementia. Older Australians have a right to remain in their own homes and live independently with dignity as long as they are able and they choose to do so.

The government's home-care package, part of the living longer, living better reforms, was meant to put older Australians at the centre of their care. What we have now is waiting times blowing out, more uncertainty about care and increased anxiety for family members and carers. In the past several months alone, the number of people on the waiting list has increased by over 15,000. Frankly, for the minister to say that this growing waiting list is a positive trajectory demonstrates how out of touch the government is in general and how out of touch it is with how desperate families are feeling across the community. This cannot be allowed to continue. The government is failing in its obligation to protect some of the most vulnerable Australians—aged people throughout our communities.

As I said, in my own community alone we have a number of people who are in very vulnerable circumstances, who want to stay within their own home or whose family members are trying to get them returned home from hospital after an incident that has seen them hospitalised for a period of time. They want to and are able to return home but cannot because they are unable to access services because they are on a waiting list. It is quite obscene to tell someone who is in their late 80s that they have to wait 12 months before they can access the high level of services that they have been assessed as needing in order to stay not only within their own home but safe and healthy within their own home. It is something that really is an absolute indictment of this government.

Our older Australians deserve much better. This government does not seem to be actively engaged in dealing with this issue. An ongoing lack of care is having dire consequences for older Australians and their families. I call on the government to fix this crisis in the upcoming budget.