Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There can be no doubt whatsoever that the aged-care sector is in crisis. Tonight I give a voice to people in Gilmore telling me about the crisis in aged care—family members and aged-care workers, all with the common bond of looking after our most precious but vulnerable elderly loved ones.

Of course, the aged-care system was already in crisis when COVID hit. Even before Neglect, the report by the royal commission into aged care, there were 22 reports on the aged-care industry. In 2018, under the coalition government, there was the A matter of care:Australia's aged care workforce strategy report, again with recommendations—but not implemented. So it should come as no surprise that the Morrison government continues to fail our most vulnerable elderly people by failing to implement recommendations from the royal commission into aged care. I have one simple ask tonight: listen to these real-life stories. How can anyone ignore them? Clearly, the government needs to do much more.

Recently I was contacted by Brett. Brett's father is in an aged-care home. Brett told me how his father has been confined to his room due to COVID, in the same way that the other residents have been. Brett understands it is due to a lack of staff. Brett wanted to know what could be done about this.

Susan is an aged-care worker. Susan told me, and these are her words, 'We've got the government telling us that we're managing; we're not. You've got the government saying everything's fine; it's not. Yesterday they said another committee is being set up. It doesn't help us. Nothing is helping us. They've offered $800, which is a slap in the face. None of us work full-time, only part-time, so there's no way that you're even going to get the $800. And, besides that, we want the money to go into care. We want more staff. We want ratios. There remains no law to have a registered nurse on site 24/7. How do you manage without a registered nurse? We're all struggling. What you do when nobody's there for 60 people? What do I do? I can't just turn and walk away. It's affecting all the residents. They're frightened. We're not coping. We're drowning. During COVID, at least a quarter of the workforce is gone, and they can't replace them. So, in January, the stats are 140,000 shifts were not filled across the board. The residents are getting substandard care because you can't do it—you can't physically do it. There is no-one to help us. It's not that management are not trying; there is just no staff. Nobody will come.'

Jess is an assistant in nursing. Jess says: 'We're incredibly short-staffed. We had a scare with a resident that came back from hospital. The resident came back and then tested positive for COVID. The management were all there, and no-one had an idea of what to do. It was as if there was no plan in place, but everyone that was on that ward were at risk. They had moved the resident that was in the room with the COVID-positive patient out into the common area. There's a huge infection control issue there. There's no privacy for this resident. Other residents are walking around because they don't know what's going on. The resident in the common area didn't have access to a call bell, so the only way to draw attention was to yell down the hallway, bringing more distress to the other residents. It was just all-round awful. We were short-staffed that day. It was me trying to figure out how I could do my day with 15 residents—trying to convey calm and trying to be a calming force for them, because all the residents are stressed out. They don't know what's happening. They can't leave their rooms.

'We had no cleaners that day, we had no lunch, like no food service that day. Basically it was all left to the carers to do. Not only am I trying to provide personal care to residents; I am trying to do medications for them and trying not to mess that up, and in charge of getting all these people their meals for the day and trying to clean up anything that has happened—and then to get a call asking us to do 12-hour shifts and to quit our second job if we had any. So that was the day that I decided I was done. I was out. I had given so much to this place. And it's such a shame, because I love aged care; I loved the residents I was looking after. The residents aren't getting the care that they deserve. They're not getting the care that they're paying for. And it just blows my mind that the government is putting all the money in, but the residents aren't getting anything from it. They're not getting the staff to do their job. There is just nothing there. It's incredibly frustrating.'

Glen is a registered nurse who works in aged care. He normally works locally but due to COVID he is part of a fly-in squad working in aged-care homes with COVID outbreaks. Glen says: 'The outbreak infects the residents and the outbreak infects the staff. When staff get infected they have to stay off the roster, and you have no capacity to deliver the services that you need to deliver.' Glen has spent time further north at another facility that also had a COVID outbreak and found exactly the same thing: 'Once the outbreak occurs within the facility staff numbers are decimated.' He says: 'There is no way you can deliver the service safely and with quality.' In the first fortnight of last month Glen put in 184 hours, which is way over the normal workload. Last fortnight Glen worked 144 hours. This fortnight Glen will work another 144 hours just to keep things functioning, not to deliver the model of care.

Glen says: 'There is a very simple solution to get the resources we need.' The simplest solution would have been not to neglect the aged-care system for 10 years. The second solution would've been to act on the 120 recommendations of the aged-care royal commission. Glen says: 'Since lockdown occurred family, friends and carers have been locked out of their homes.' We now have a public vaccination rate that is high enough to afford those people sufficient protection to be able to enter the facilities and provide care and support when the rosters are short.

The government needs to look at its myopic policy on vaccination and lockdowns and start to think realistically about the needs of residents. Glen says: 'When you spend 184 hours a fortnight in full PPE it is very physically demanding. In the last five weeks I've lost weight. When you take your PPE off after two hours you have to take all your other clothes off and replace them with fresh clothes because they're saturated in perspiration.' Glen says: 'The general public has no clue what's going on here.' He goes on to say: 'The Morrison government had absolutely no idea. There is a gentleman who is 90 something years old who has been locked in his bedroom since December. There is something seriously wrong with the world.' We're doing that to the elderly. We're here because of them. They're the forgotten people.

The tragedy here is that this was foreseeable. There is not one aspect of this calamity that could not be forecast by somebody working in the industry. The medical profession, the nursing profession and the carers had been flagging it since the beginning of the pandemic. 'We've been ignored. You just get so down every day. There's an awful lot of emotional and mental exhaustion from all workers. We have residents who are normally calm, cool and collected who are now getting very abusive and emotionally upset and striking out. It's a flow-on effect to everybody. We don't have time to go in and sit with them and talk to them for four hours because there are 40 others. They won't listen to us. How can you keep ignoring it?' You don't get to say that I would rather go to the cricket than go to a Senate committee hearing.

Imagine how our beautiful elderly in care are feeling at the moment. It's not right at all. Glen says: 'It can't really get any worse. Just the dying in care would get worse.' These real-life stories are truly shocking. I implore the government to do more before it's too late.