Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to speak about Wayne, who lives in Frankston, and his mother. Wayne's mum was on a level 2 aged-care package, which is an allowance of about $14,000 a year. She used that money for home visits, a few meals and, most importantly, a daily visit by a nurse to administer her medications. Sadly, Wayne's mum's needs have increased, so she's now got a level 3 package. Wayne, his family and his mum thought—as anyone who is thinking about getting a higher-level package would think—'That's great; it means she's now got an allowance of $34,000 a year and can get the assistance that she needs.' But in fact she is now worse off, because administration fees calculated as a percentage of the package are now about $8,000 a year out of that package, with Wayne's mum not getting any further administration support than she was previously getting. And, extraordinarily, the fees for the nurse to visit to administer those medications daily are calculated as a percentage of the package, and now are nearly $28,000 a year, when they were $3,800 a year. The service hasn't changed.

Wayne thought this must be a mistake, and he went to My Aged Care. What was he advised? He was advised that there was no mistake but that this is a constant problem. This federal government knows that there is a constant problem—that people on home-care packages who go up a level because of their increased needs are in fact having that extra money taken away by extra costs, without more services. So now Wayne's mum is in a situation where she has a home-care package and medication fees that exceed her allowance, and the $18,000 increase has actually meant she is worse off. She is more in need and has less support.

We hear day after day after day about problems in the aged-care system and problems in aged-care facilities. We hear about the 100,000 people on the waiting list for a home-care package and how long it takes to get a home-care package and the tens of thousands of people who have died waiting for a package. Now we're hearing about a system where the greater your need—for people like Wayne's mum—the less support you're getting. It's past time for this government to fix the system for our oldest Australians.