Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about carers and the valuable contribution that they make to our community. In 2003 the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that there were almost 2.6 million carers in Australia. One-fifth of these were primary carers and over half of all carers were women. Access Economics estimated that carers provided 1.2 billion hours of care in 2005. This is the annual equivalent of over $30½ billion worth of formal care services. Carers save the government, the taxpayers and the community an enormous amount of money. They also provide much needed support for tens of thousands of people with disabilities, and they do it with compassion and love. They play a vital role in our community and they are an integral part of our society. I believe that they are in fact the unsung heroes of Australia.

The coalition government recognised the important contribution that carers made to our society. In 1999 the coalition introduced the carers allowance as an income supplement for people who provide daily care to children and adults with disabilities. From September 2004 the allowance was extended to eligible carers who did not live with the person they cared for. The coalition government extended the eligibility for the carer payment and increased the number of hours of work, education or training a carer could undertake each week without losing the carer payment. We took it from 10 to 25 hours.

This had the effect of increasing the number of carer payment recipients from 25,000 to 105,000. It also increased total spending on carer payment from $182 million in 1995-96 to an estimated $1.2 billion in 2005-06. The coalition government also initiated the carer bonus and gave it every year from 2004. This bonus went some way to alleviating the costs experienced by carers. Carer payment recipients received a $1,000 bonus and carer allowance recipients received a $600 bonus. Over the last four coalition budgets, the amount provided to carers in bonus payments totalled more than $1.3 billion.

Apart from these income supplements and bonuses, the coalition provided payments to assist with the purchase of necessary support, new peer support groups for carers, additional respite services and recognition of young carers, among many other programs. During the 2007 election campaign, we also promised to extend the utilities allowance to carer payment recipients, something that the ALP has said ‘me too’ on and has since enacted.

Of course, unlike the Labor Party, the coalition acknowledges that a great deal more needs to be done. I want to remind the Labor government that it cannot ignore these great Australians any longer. It is now time to look at the plight of carers—carers who are suffering at the inactive hands of this uncaring government. Never before in the history of this great nation has a government been in such a position to provide additional support to those who most need it. The Rudd government is sitting on a $23 billion surplus—that is $23 billion that could be partly used to ease the needs of thousands of carers. But we should not really be surprised, because this was a government that in March this year plunged carers into the realm of uncertainty when it refused to rule out cutting the carers bonus.

Of course, the government will give us lots of words about how they are conducting an inquiry into better support for carers, as if that is some sort of justification for their inaction, but the inquiry will not report until next year. There are some carers who simply cannot afford to wait for additional support. In fact, the most recent edition of the other place’s magazine, About the House, features many stories from those struggling carers. Peter from Melbourne gets a fortnightly carers allowance for looking after a close friend. He says he does an average of a 12-hour day and his benefit amounts to ‘about 59c an hour’. He says:

My 59 cents an hour is mostly absorbed in fuel for the motor car and medication.

…            …            …

There are many carers who are at a point in their life where accumulating fatigue makes an already difficult undertaking even more challenging.

He says:

… carers need respite as much as those we care for need carers.

Carreen Dew from New South Wales is only 20 years old. She has been caring for her younger brother, Alec, for nine years. Alec has multiple disabilities that require him to breathe through a tracheotomy. She says:

It’s been very hard, my dad doesn’t live with us and I was 12 when my brother was born, so straight away I became the second parent of the house.

My brother has had over 150 hospital admissions, so when he’s in hospital I’m in charge of the house doing all the cooking, cleaning and getting Alec’s twin to and from school.

               …            …            …

My brother can’t breathe through his mouth and he has to breathe through a tractotomy so when I was 12 I had to learn to change it weekly. He also can’t eat because of this and he has to be fed through a gastrostomy button in his stomach and that also has to be changed regularly. So from an early age I was learning how to do some pretty scary things and it didn’t always go to plan.

               …            …            …

Even at night you constantly sleep with one eye open and in the past nine years my family has only had two nights where we have been relieved of this responsibility, so the need for respite care was definitely one of my main points to tell the committee.

Maggie from Sydney is only 20 years old and cares for her mother, who has a spinal cord injury, and also has a brother with a disability. She says:

We save every penny we can get. It’s very financially hard for us with the cost of medication, household bills and paying off the home loan. Basically my mum’s disability pension goes towards the home loan and my carer’s payment goes on food, electricity, bills and medication.

My sister has also just been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis so her medical bills are just going through the roof—it’s $400 just to get a scan to see what’s wrong and we don’t have that money. We have to save it up.

Lisa Humphries from Sydney is 35 years old. She only was only 16 when she and her younger brother became carers for their mother after she suffered a severe brain injury from a car accident. Her mother has since passed away from cancer. Lisa says:

Being a young carer was so difficult—it was really isolating. The time when I was at school as a 16, 17 and 18 year old, it was just horrendous to try and study as well as look after someone with a brain injury.

               …            …            …

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in my 20s, I then quit work and cared for her full-time. I recall I went on the carer’s pension which was about $200 per week, it basically only paid for me to clothe and feed myself, that was it. As someone in my 30s, I am now 10 years behind my friends and peers in financial terms because I couldn’t earn anything or grow my career.

For 22 years Cathy cared for her sister, who suffered a brain injury. She says:

I am finding it difficult to keep up both my caring roles but keep on pushing myself. I do not know how long I can keep this up without support, particularly housing.

She identifies the common issues for carers as being:

… stress from the demands of caring every day coupled with day to day issues of existence, financial constraint from being a carer, loneliness, lack of opportunities such as education, work, recreation and being devalued by society.

Jill and Will from Perth are parents of a daughter with a disability. They say:

We are both in our late 50s and the future of our 26-year-old daughter is a constant worry. Once we are unable to care for her for a variety of reasons, what happens?

These are just some of the thousands and thousands of stories that carers from across Australia have to tell. They have told me, they have told Senate committees and they have now had their stories told in the About the House magazine. What is happening with it? What are we doing about it? Frankly, the Rudd government is doing nothing.

Those on the other side claim they have had a recent conversion to conservatism. They have had this great epiphany and they have declared themselves to be conservatives. But let me tell the people of Australia that they are pretenders. They are pretenders because true conservatives, of which I am proudly one, would not—could not—be as cold of heart as the Rudd Labor government.

True conservatives do not regard others as part of the general collective in which the identity of the individual is ignored. True conservatives do not check their compassion at the door of government. True conservatism is sympathetic to the plight of the pensioner, the carer and those living with disabilities. True conservatives do not dither and seek excuses not to act in the face of human problems; they extend a helping hand to those most in need. True conservatives are compassionate conservatives and this compassionate conservative will continue to fight against the Rudd government, which is prepared to debase the dignity of the individual by ignoring the urgent needs of our carers and pensioners. At a time when this government continually boasts about its $23 billion surplus, it is a shame and it is a tragedy that carers are forced to experience such heartache and distress as I have outlined today.

This is not about accounting, it is not about numbers, it is not about winning votes; it is about people. Politics is about people and these people work very hard for very little financial reward. These people do an unsung duty by all other Australians. They work very hard and they care for others. These carers sacrifice so much to provide a better quality of life for their family, for their loved ones and those that they care about.

Let me tell you that the coalition puts people before politics. If putting people before politics—which is declared a stunt by the Labor Party—is some sort of crime, well then send in the bailiffs and you can lock us all up because we will continue to advocate for people before the inaction and the politics driven media cycle of the Rudd Labor government. We will not stop fighting for people with a disability. We will not stop fighting for carers and we will not stop fighting for families—all the things that the Labor government have chosen to ignore. On behalf of the coalition, this is our commitment and we will continue to drive this Rudd government until they provide much needed relief to those most in need.