Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the response.

The government statement tabled today is in response to a report which was tabled in this place on 23 June 2005. It has taken this government two years and three months to respond to a report that you would expect the Senate to receive within three months. It is normal to expect a government response three months after the tabling of a report, but we have had to wait two years and three months to receive this document.

I was very pleased to be the chair of that inquiry into aged care by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee. I acknowledge Senator Allison’s involvement in developing the terms of reference, particularly on the issues affecting young people in nursing homes. To take two years and three months to respond to what was an excellent but not huge report is appalling. This government document is one of hollow self-congratulation. It intentionally misunderstands some of the recommendations.

The report was divided into a range of areas. Time will not allow me to deal with all of them but, hopefully, I will get to the most important ones. Almost three years ago, when I became the shadow minister for ageing, the big issue people would talk to me about when I went to aged-care facilities was funding, particularly capital raising. The most significant issue now facing aged care, both residential and community—and this government knows it—is attracting and retaining a quality workforce to care for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

The response from the government to the seven recommendations that the committee made in our report is, to be frank, ridiculous. The first recommendation that our committee made was to do with the number of nurses that we have in aged care—in particular, residential aged care. In the life of this government, the number of registered and enrolled nurses who now work in our aged-care facilities in Australia has reduced. At the same time, the number of people who live in residential aged care in Australia has increased by almost 25,000. So we have fewer qualified nurses caring for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

The recommendation of our committee was to follow the recommendation of Professor Warren Hogan, which was to increase the number of undergraduate nursing places at Australian universities to 1,000. The response is offensive. It talks about the 440 aged-care nurses funded in the 2004-05 budget. That is acknowledged in the recommendation. The response then goes on to talk about the normal number of undergraduate places that are there every year—year in, year out. The recommendation was clear. We want an extra thousand at least to deal with the problem that we have in finding nurses to work right across the health sector but particularly in aged care.

In 2004 this government received a report that said that we are 19,000 nurses short in this country. I note, though, that the government in its response was too embarrassed to talk about the 500 enrolled nurses who, the Prime Minister announced last week, are now going to be trained in hospitals rather than in the well-organised and well-run TAFE system. We know, and Catholic Health Australia knows, that those 500 enrolled nurses that the government has promised to be trained in TAFE will never end up in aged care, because the pathway is not there. I commend Francis Sullivan from Catholic Health Australia for raising the issue, as did I, because we know that that announcement will not result in any new nurses, either enrolled or full nurses, who work in aged care.

Recommendation 5 of the committee report said that as, a matter of priority, we need to expand the National Aged Care Workforce Strategy to encompass the full aged-care workforce, including medical and allied health professionals across all of the aged-care sector, including the community care sector. There is a little bit of honesty in the response to this recommendation. The government acknowledge that further work needs to occur to cover the full aged-care workforce. What have they been doing?

We have known of the problem of workforce in aged care, but the government are still acknowledging that we need to do further work. The next paragraph of the response does tell you what has been happening: they have taken a census. They have counted the number of people who are working in aged care. I am sorry, but we actually need more than counting people who work in aged care. We would like to know how we are going to train, pay and therefore keep people in aged-care services so that we can actually run the facilities that we have.

The second section that the report goes to is a section on accreditation. The first recommendation talks about the need for delivering consistency in assessment of aged-care facilities. The second recommendation goes to the question of the accuracy of assessors’ decisions and, further, is about the access to the process of accreditation by both residents and their families. Once again, the government has intentionally misunderstood the first two recommendations. The issues have not been addressed by this government. Every time there is a problem in aged care and an issue is raised, particularly in the media, the question of consistency of assessment is raised.

We need to have confidence as a community in a system that delivers a fair analysis of the quality of care that is being provided. It is my clear and strong view that we have in fact eroded that confidence in the accreditation process in aged care, particularly over the last 18 months. Aged-care providers have no confidence in the assessment system. The more they find out about it, the more families have limited confidence in the process of accreditation and quality assurance. Unfortunately, we are now getting to the point where I do not think parliamentarians have confidence in the process either. When we lose confidence in the process, I am afraid it is time for a review.

Also in that section, the committee recommended that the agency develop a ratings system that would allow residents and families to make informed comparisons between different aged-care facilities. This followed on from a recommendation of Professor Hogan, who recommended that there be a star rating so that people could make some decision about the facility before either entering it themselves or placing a loved one there. Personally, I do not agree with Professor Hogan’s star rating. It is not a motel that we are talking about. We are talking about a place where a person is going to live and receive care.

Once again, the government intentionally misunderstood the recommendation. The recommendation says that we want to give people information so they can make an informed judgement on where they might want to go. The government then went to great lengths to talk about how they have developed a website. And the website is quite good. Whoever developed it did a quite good job. But it does not allow you to make any comparison about the quality of care that is being provided at the facility—the level of staffing. It does not tell you what charges will be levelled on any resident. It does tell you where it is, and that is useful. We acknowledge that; that is okay. But, once again intentionally, the government has not addressed the guts of the question. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.