Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety shone a light on an aged-care system in crisis. It showed us the tragic outcomes of eight long years of neglect by the Morrison government, including aged-care residents suffering with maggots in their wounds and two-thirds of residents being malnourished or at risk of malnourishment. These stories were made all the more tragic by the fact that they weren't new stories. Families of older Australians in aged care, and the workers who care for them, had been sounding the alarm for years, but the government ignored them. In fact, they failed to act on 21 reports that showed older Australians were suffering in aged care. As then Treasurer, Scott Morrison even cut funding by $1.7 billion, while his government's response to the royal commission and the aged-care crisis has fallen well short.

Today I want to talk about how this neglect of older Australians has been affecting people in my electorate. At the last census, close to half of the over-55s in my electorate spoke a language other than English at home. The rate is even higher among younger age groups. Parramatta is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Australia. The aged-care royal commission found there is a lack of understanding and respect for people's culture, background and life experience in Australian aged care. Again, this is not news. My community has been talking about this for a long, long time.

But what does this lack of understanding look like? It looks like becoming isolated, because none of your carers speak your language, or losing the ability to communicate when dementia takes away your second language and you revert to your mother tongue. It looks like being served meat when you're vegetarian, or not being served halal food, and relying on loved ones delivering food to you twice a day to make sure you eat—something that wasn't possible in lockdown. It looks like not being able to connect with your religion or the activities or hobbies that you enjoy—the things that give you comfort and joy.

The truth is that seniors from diverse backgrounds are hitting barriers at every step of their aged-care journey. It starts with information. Local aged-care services tell me that seniors from CALD backgrounds have trouble finding information in their language, which is usually only available online. Often, by the time seniors and their families find this information, the need is urgent. When you call My Aged Care, you need to know enough English to answer basic questions about yourself and request a translator in English. I find it hard to believe, but I've heard it now from so many people—that you have to ask for a translator in English in order to get a translator. This is a huge barrier for many CALD seniors and one they have to clear over and over again every time they want to access a new service or get reassessed for a higher level package.

Take the example of a man in his 80s who called my office before the lockdown. He is deaf in one ear, partially deaf in the other, blind, only speaks Serbian and doesn't have a family who can help. As you can imagine, this man struggles to communicate over the phone. My staff realised this and arranged to visit him at home with a translator. During that visit we learnt that he hadn't had a hot meal in six months because his mobility had deteriorated and he couldn't cook for himself. He desperately needed help, but he couldn't communicate with My Aged Care over the phone. As a result of that visit, he was connected to My Aged Care and is now getting help, but it terrifies me to think of what might have happened if he hadn't managed to find my office.

Even seniors who are able to overcome these barriers and get through to My Aged Care end up with services that don't meet their needs, in terms of language or cultural needs, whether it's at home or in residential aged care. Local aged-care services tell me that seniors want home carers who can understand their culture and language and who know what they're saying but that there are simply not enough carers with these skills and that the pay is so low that it's hard to attract people. This is not an outrageous demand. I'm sure it's the minimum we would all expect for our loved ones and for ourselves.

For seniors who are isolated from family and friends, the carer who visits them at home may be the only person who ever visits them, and a shared language is central to that. Most residential aged-care providers in Parramatta claim to be multicultural; however, none of them specify what language they speak other than English on the My Aged Care website. Western Sydney is served by a small community of culturally specific aged-care providers, and I've worked with quite a few of them over the years to develop those services. They include the Australian Chinese Community Association, the Greek Welfare Centre in my electorate and Sri Om Care. But these are a rarity.

According to a report by UTS for Seva International, there are only two services providing culturally specific care for South Asian communities in Western Sydney, where South Asian people represent 14 per cent of the population. Sue Advani from Seva says that South Asian seniors who go into residential aged care all too often find themselves unable to communicate with their carers, and, because of the language barrier, they can't participate in activities either. They rely on family members to deliver food they can eat—for example, vegetarian food. When you consider the rate of malnourishment among aged-care residents generally and the risk to seniors of being served something that is not suitable for their diet or religious beliefs, this is more than worrying. Even more worrying than that is that Sue says this is a common experience. For all seniors and families in this situation, culturally inappropriate care adds layers of complexity and despair. She wants to see a concerted effort from governments to not only support specialist services but make sure all aged-care services are equipped to care for their local communities.

It's hard to imagine the Morrison government delivering on this, when the response to the royal commission has fallen so short and given they have neglected this area for so many years. They have fobbed off, delayed or outright rejected recommendations. Of the 148 recommendations from the royal commission, over half are not being implemented or aren't being implemented properly. They announced $17.7 billion over five years, which sounds like a big number. But it promises 80,000 extra home-care places, which won't even clear the existing backlog, let alone deal with the kinds of issues that I'm raising in this place today. CALD seniors are being locked out and left behind by a system that is already failing most of the older Australians in its care, and they deserve much better.

I also want to talk about a brilliant campaign to help people in the community get the best possible care at the end of their lives—the Westmead Push for Palliative Care. Palliative care aims to give people who have advanced disease, with little or no prospect of survival, quality of life at the end of their lives. The care is provided by specialists who are experts in pain management as well as compassionate and spiritual support. Despite being one of the biggest hospital precincts in Australia, Westmead Hospital has not had a dedicated palliative care ward for many years. In fact, there is only one dedicated palliative care ward, with 16 beds, in the Western Sydney local health district, and it's at Mount Druitt. That's 16 dedicated palliative care beds in a health district serving close to one million people, which is expected to reach 1.3 million by 2031.

This means that locals who can't receive palliative care at home because of complex needs are faced with a difficult choice: stay in a hospital where your doctors are based and where you may still be receiving treatment on a ward that's focused on providing care to recovering patients, or move to a different, unfamiliar hospital, which may not be able to provide the other treatments you need for specialised end-of-life care. Patients who choose the palliative care unit at Mount Druitt often have to shuttle back and forth to Westmead to see specialists or undergo surgery when they are frail and unwell. Those who stay at Westmead will share just one specialist palliative care nurse. Before lockdown and increased COVID-19 restrictions, oncology patients were sharing wards with end-of-life patients. Volunteers say this will happen until there is a dedicated palliative care ward at Westmead Hospital.

This matters. Most Australians die in hospital—51 per cent in 2019. Many will need palliative care, and the demand for palliative care in hospitals is growing every year. Westmead Push for Palliative Care, an extraordinary local organisation, has been fighting to reinstate a palliative care ward at Westmead Hospital, and I'd like to thank them for their efforts, as well as the dedicated volunteers, including Dr Philip Lee, who is head of the former palliative care unit at Westmead; Caroline Raunjak; and Anna Pelle. The New South Wales government has just agreed to reinstate a palliative care unit at Westmead because of their extraordinary advocacy. But we still don't know when the unit will be open or what it will look like. Westmead Push for Palliative Care is keeping up the fight to make sure the unit opens soon and that it's a standalone dedicated palliative care ward with appropriate bed numbers and is staffed by experienced specialist palliative care nurses. Funding of this redevelopment by New South Wales Health is critical. Thanks to Westmead Push for Palliative Care for keeping up the fight.