Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have not often seen such a shameless beat-up on the floor of the Senate as I have seen with this issue today. Frankly, I think the members of the opposition do no credit to themselves by using the language that they do about Australia’s aged care system. ‘A system in crisis,’ we hear. ‘A system that isn’t working,’ we hear. Members opposite not only are obviously quite content to play politics with this issue and to take what information they have to paint a picture which is a very serious distortion of what is taking place in Australia’s aged care system at the moment but are also quite prepared to do so in circumstances where they treat the sensibilities of those in that system and the families of those in that system as merely pawns in this rather tawdry game that they play.

The fact is that Australia’s aged care system, while far from perfect, has experienced enormous improvement in the last 10 years under this government, and nobody could objectively look at the way in which Australia’s aged care system operates today and not honestly come to that conclusion. Senator Carol Brown jumped up in this debate and made a series of claims about things that have gone wrong in nursing homes around Australia. I do not have any evidence to suggest that the things that she listed did not at one stage occur, but I think Senator Brown and those with her on that side of the chamber need to answer two questions. First of all, can she honestly say that incidents of that character did not occur during the 13 years before 1996 when the Labor Party was in government? Of course she cannot guarantee that. Secondly, can they really promise to the electors of Australia that somehow under a Labor government incidents of that kind would not occur? Of course they cannot.

The question is not whether in isolated cases around this country there are failures in the standards that we expect of our aged care system. The question is: have we done enough to lift that standard, to better fund the aged care system and to provide an adequate safety net for those who enter aged care facilities in this country? I believe that we have taken very important steps towards achieving just those goals. The fact of the matter is that we have in place across this country today, for the first time, a comprehensive accreditation system of nursing homes and aged care facilities which never existed under the previous Labor government. The fact is that in many cases we would not know whether the sorts of incidents that Senator Brown listed in her speech actually occurred, because there was not an accreditation system to pick those things up.

Today, we have standards in place. They are very high standards. Obviously, not every aged care facility in this country is able to meet those standards to the same degree as every other. We have the enormous irony of those opposite attacking the government because certain homes on occasions—I suggest fairly isolated occasions—do not meet the standards that they themselves could not be bothered to put in place when they were in government in this country for many years. You did not have those standards and now you criticise us because on occasions people in this country do not meet the standards that we have put in place.

We have required the certification of aged care facilities so that a certain standard has to be met in terms of the infrastructure and the quality of the fabric of those buildings in this country, and we have backed those demands for higher standards with funding to the aged care system to ensure that it is better able to meet those new standards. We have also of course greatly increased spending on aged care across the board in this country, including more than doubling the amount we spend on aged care by, for example, enlarging the number of places available in Australia for those who seek residential accommodation.

That is about doing something to improve the system. It is a comprehensive response to that problem. It is a response to a system which was left to us in disarray and disrepair 10 years ago when we came to office, and we make no apologies for the fact that we have made enormous strides in meeting those new standards. Senator McLucas describes this as a system which is not working. That is a disgraceful claim, and it is not borne out by the evidence. (Time expired)