Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

Australia has an ageing population, which will cause a significant increase in demand for aged care services over the coming decades, including aged care facilities,

(ii)

the Federal Government has direct responsibility for the provision of aged care, while the states have responsibility for a range of matters, including the provision of education,

(iii)

the Rudd Government has failed to do anything to tackle the capital funding crisis in the aged care sector,

(iv)

the Rudd Government’s reckless and irresponsible inaction, if left unaddressed, means that the current crisis in aged care will only get worse into the future, and

(v)

the Rudd Government has wasted significant sums of money on the poorly-designed and poorly-implemented Building the Education Revolution program, while failing to tackle the significant challenges faced by the aged care sector;

(b)

is very concerned that the failure of the Rudd Government to act and address the significant challenges ahead in aged care means that elderly Australians will not be able to get access to affordable, high-quality aged care places in the future; and

(c)

calls on the Government to take decisive action forthwith to address the significant challenges facing aged care.

The Rudd government is failing senior Australians in desperate need of timely access to quality aged care services. They are failing senior Australians and their families. Right now we are facing a crisis in aged care which will only get worse if it is left unaddressed by the Rudd government.

We have a government that is spending like drunken sailors. They have been going on spending spree after spending spree. They have been borrowing money to give it away. We have had billions of dollars in $900 cheques go out to people, including to people who are overseas, people who are in jail and people who are dead. We have had waste and mismanagement with the so-called Building the Education Revolution. Billions of dollars are being splashed around like there is no tomorrow. We have got $1.7 billion of overspending and $7 million to $8 million for signs.

We have got spending, spending and spending. Yet in the very crucial and important Health and Ageing portfolio we have got no action whatsoever: budget cuts and reviews to waste time—or gain time, if you look at it from the government’s political point of view. The government has got its head in the sand while people are out there struggling to get timely access to the aged care services they need.

Australia has an ageing population. That is one of the biggest social issues that we are facing as a nation. With an ageing population comes a significant increase in demand for a range of related services, including aged care services and facilities. What has been happening is that under the regulatory and funding regimes that are currently in place it is no longer financially viable for providers to invest in the facilities that are needed to provide high-care services in aged care, in particular.

Our aged care system today is overregulated and underfunded and it is failing to deliver a good standard of care. At a time when there is increasing demand for services, providers are walking away from the industry because of the non-viability of high care and the compliance demands of the government. Senior Australians are increasingly finding they are unable to access the services and care they need, and this is putting additional pressure on our hospital system.

As I have mentioned, in the 2009-10 budget there is a spendathon going on, with waste and mismanagement everywhere. What do we see in the area of aged care? Budget cuts—in a portfolio that is supposed to be one of the highest priorities areas of the government, or so we were led to believe in the lead-up to the last election. But no. While the government is throwing money around everywhere else, in health and ageing we are seeing budget cut after budget cut and inaction, completely ignoring the significant crisis that is currently going on.

What has happened? As I have mentioned, there are increases in demand coming from the ageing population. The department goes through an exercise every year called the aged care approvals round, where the department determines what the need for services is going to be. They come up with a figure and it is broken down by state; in fact, it is broken down by what is called a planning region. Based on population, demographics and a whole series of trends, they map out the number of services we need. You have only got to look at how those numbers have been developing over the last two years to get a sense of the extent of the crisis that we are facing. It has been worse in my home state of Western Australia over the past two years—and in the great state of Tasmania where Senator Polley comes from, and I see she has just walked into the chamber.

I will go through the figures now, Senator Polley. This is what was allocated in the great state of Western Australia in the round done towards the end of 2007: 1,006 places were made available. That is what the government thought was needed to address the likely demand. How many places were taken up by providers in the aged care sector? Six hundred and sixty-four. There was a shortfall of 342 beds. There were 342 fewer beds than the government thought were required to provide the services.

Why is that? Because under the current funding and regulatory arrangements, investment in aged care is not viable. And the government is not doing anything about it. The government is spending everywhere else, but in the aged care sector, and in the Health and Ageing portfolio more generally, we are talking fiscal restraint and budget cuts. They are making sure that senior Australians are paying the price for Labor’s reckless spending everywhere else.

I promised Senator Polley that I would focus on Tasmania as well. In the 2007 round, the government thought that 167 beds were needed. Only 63 of them were allocated. That was a shortfall of 104 beds out of 167 in 2007. That is significantly more than half of the beds that the government thought were needed in aged care in Tasmania that were not allocated. At the time these figures came out, the minister put out a press release and said, ‘Everything is fine; the aged-care industry is nice and healthy and financially sound.’ Do you know why she said that? Because in the states of New South Wales and Victoria there was no shortfall. Some of these eastern-state-centric Rudd government ministers find it very difficult to look past New South Wales and Victoria when it comes to assessing the need for services in states like Western Australia and Tasmania.

What about the next year? Maybe 2007, after the Rudd government was elected, was a bad year. Many people would say that that was a bad year. Certainly people in the Health and Ageing portfolio found that that was a terrible year, because all we have had since is inaction, reviews followed by reviews into reviews, budget cuts, tax hikes and the old-fashioned crusade against private health. That is all we have had in the Health and Ageing portfolio, and they have their heads in the sand on the aged-care sector. They are not facing up to the serious crisis that is taking place.

So what happened in the subsequent year, the 2008-09 round? Remember that a year before it was only Western Australia and Tasmania that were under-allocated. In 2008-09, all states but South Australia—every single state but South Australia—had fewer beds taken up by providers than what the government thought were needed to provide adequate levels of services. In New South Wales 114 fewer beds were taken up by providers than what the government thought was required, which was 2,106. In Victoria, 1,486 beds were made available and there was a shortfall of 148 beds, or 10 per cent. In Queensland, there was a significant shortfall. The government thought that 2,416 beds were required to provide an adequate level of service. How many were taken up by providers? Only 1,603. That was a shortfall of 813 beds. In my home state of Western Australia, what happened was an absolute disgrace. Out of the 1,208 beds that the government thought were required, only 519 were taken up—less than half of what the government thought was required. And it keeps going.

This is not the only problem. Aged-care providers are not only not taking up the bed licences that are being made available by the government—because they cannot see that it would be financially viable for them to do so—but also handing licences back. In Senate estimates, we have asked very detailed questions about what has been happening. The answers are terribly concerning. Between 1 December 2007—a short time after the Rudd government was elected, of course—and 25 March 2009, 786 bed licences were handed back.

So here we have a situation in which there is increasing demand because of an ageing population, people not taking up the bed licences made available by the government and people handing back bed licences that they have previously been allocated. And how many of those 786 come from Western Australia, Senator Sterle? You are a senator for Western Australia. You should care about this. You should stand up to your government. You should say to the Prime Minister that it is time that he took some action and that it is time that he remembered that the buck stops with him. Clearly, the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Minister for Ageing are too junior and do not have the pull across cabinet. They clearly cannot get the Prime Minister to focus on this. It is time that the Prime Minister remembered that on aged care and health the buck stops with him. It is time that he took some action. Out of 786 beds that were handed back, 283 came out of Western Australia.