Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Aged Care. The government's aged care reforms include changes to home-care support, but people in rural areas of my electorate of Indi are concerned their packages will continue to be chewed up by provider travel costs, reducing the services they actually receive. How will you ensure regional and rural Australians won't be disadvantaged by the travel costs of delivering Support at Home?

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Indi for her question and for her ongoing dedication to making sure that we do improve aged care, particularly in the regions but for everybody, and lift the standard across the country. We are acutely aware of the challenges facing providing quality care and better care to people in the regions. That's why, like you talk about, the new Support at Home program, which is due to come in 1 July next year, represents $4.3 billion worth of investment in new money for the sector, to make sure that we can deliver better and higher quality services.

One of the features of Support at Home is that pricing and what pricing looks like for everybody, no matter where they live, will be determined by IHACPA, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. That should give both providers and people needing care in your area some reassurance that there is an independent eye looking at this and advising the government on what those prices should be. We will be looking at that advice. We are required to table it in the parliament. It's very transparent, so you will be able to see it too. That will dictate what we offer by way of services and how much those services need to cost.

I'd add by way of additional relevant information that we provided, I think, more than $600 million worth of services for providers in thin markets, which most frequently affect people in rural, regional and remote areas. That's $600 worth of measures specifically acknowledging the fact that, like you say, people in the regions have particular challenges that we need to address as a federal government when giving them aged care.

Support at Home more generally will assist more than 300,000 participants in the next 10 years. It's the most transformational reform that this sector has seen, and will see, in 30 years. It will help with shorter wait times for people who are waiting for these services. We know that we need to get wait times down. It will give people more tailored support, so that the people you're talking about at the moment who are on home-care packages who use things like transport services will move to eight different permanent levels, which will better acknowledge the challenges that people face and the services that they need to receive as they stay at home for longer.

There'll be support for home modifications—up to $15,000 for people in homes in your electorate to put in ramps and modify their bathrooms so that they can actually stay at home rather than needing to go into residential aged care. There's also a better transit arrangement, so that, if you have a fall, we're going to uplift the allied health support that you can receive both before going into hospital and when coming out of hospital so that you and your family aren't positioned in hospital having to make a decision about going into residential aged care purely because there's nothing to help you in the three to six weeks when you need that extra support before you can go back to normal living at home.

All in all, I'm on the case and IHACPA will help regulate that pricing, particularly with respect to transport services.