Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on a matter of public interest which is the reality for the aged-care sector of failed expectations raised by this Rudd Labor government and of failed promises and dashed hopes. The ageing of our population is the biggest social issue facing Australia. Australia has a rapidly ageing population that is living longer with more complex health conditions and increasing and changing aged-care needs. At a time when there is increasing demand for services, providers are walking away from this sector due to the lack of viability in providing high-care beds and the increasing compliance demands of the Labor government.

The aged-care industry is in meltdown. Forty per cent of aged-care providers are operating in the red and 2,000 aged-care beds and 786 bed licences have been lost since 2007. The outlook is bleak for growing the capacity of aged care in Australia. Senior Australians are finding it increasingly difficult to access the services and the care they need when and where they want them. This continues to place pressure on the public hospital system. Catholic Health Australia have said to us that on any given night in this country there are 3,000 people in our hospitals who should be better cared for in our aged-care facilities.

There are many dedicated and committed individuals in this sector who are doing a fantastic job under difficult circumstances. I have seen firsthand the frustration of the sector with the approach of the Rudd Labor government to aged care and their failure to deliver on promises and make hard decisions. What did we see at the last federal election? We had Kevin Rudd on 8 August 2007 criticising the then government:

The other part is you’ve got the Federal Government there not providing enough aged care beds and people are becoming bed blockers in acute hospital beds. That’s part of the real problem nationwide.

Then we had Labor releasing their policy, which it entitled ‘New directions for older Australians: improving the transition between hospital and aged care’. That was the promise that they made to older Australians. What have they done? They are doing the complete opposite. Now they are shuffling off more and more money to the failed state and territory hospital systems to keep older Australians in hospitals for longer stays. It is a breach of the very promise that was on the front page of their aged-care policy. If we look at the recent budget, we see there was very little to secure the future of aged care for older Australians. The crisis in the aged-care sector has deepened as the Prime Minister continues to neglect and ignore the need for structural reform. Aged care is another casualty of Labor’s failure to make hard decisions while they underdeliver on promises and run up debt.

All the hard decisions that need to be made in the aged-care sector have been shunted off to yet another Productivity Commission review on aged care, which will not report until April 2011. There have been myriad reviews in this area. Indeed, one provider in Tasmania told me a few weeks ago that since 2007 his organisation has made submissions to 17 reviews by this government. We have had 17 reviews but absolutely no response whatsoever. All we have had is aged care—which the Prime Minister tells us is a major issue—shunted off to the Productivity Commission because it is all too hard. It is out of sight, out of mind until after the next federal election. There it was in black and white in the budget papers, ‘Future funding arrangements for the delivery of aged care will be reviewed in light of the findings of the Productivity Commission inquiry into aged care.’ Ken Henry had something to say about aged care. Mr Henry’s views on aged care have also been parked with the Productivity Commission.

In what really has to be one of the lowest acts of this government, Labor have raided money put aside in the aged-care budget for new nursing home beds to help fund this supposedly grand hospital plan—this big-taxing big-spending budget. They have redirected $276.4 million, which was destined for high-care residential aged-care places, to help state and territory governments with long stays in hospitals, to prop up failed state and territory hospital budgets. The frail and aged in this country who need a nursing home bed and cannot find a bed are now expected to pay for Labor’s massive budget deficit, which this year is coming in at over $40 billion, the second-biggest since World War II. We are borrowing at $700 million a week, or $100 million a day.