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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise to take note of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee report into the provisions of the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Bill 2013 and four other aged-care bills. I take this opportunity because it is very clear that next week any opportunity to speak on these bills will be severely curtailed. I was afforded five minutes earlier today, and I thought I would take another 10 minutes this afternoon because next week, as is clear from some information that has become available this afternoon, we are likely to have less than 45 minutes on these five very, very complicated bills. And at this point in time we still have not seen in their final form the 18 pieces of delegated legislation that are part of that package of bills.

I will make some comments in relation to this report. The coalition referred these bills to committee inquiry even though the bills were still in the lower house. We were keen to make sure that they did get proper scrutiny and therefore facilitated their examination by the Senate. The reporting date was initially set for 17 June. However, by a majority vote of the committee, this was brought forward to 31 May. From a coalition perspective, we were very concerned because the reduced time did not afford us much consideration of the legislation, particularly the delegated legislation that I have mentioned. The anticipated reporting date did not mean that the bills were considered any earlier in the Senate, and indeed they could not have been listed in the Senate before this Tuesday. I reiterate that, from the coalition's perspective, we have been ready to deal with these bills and we certainly were ready on Tuesday. It has been as a consequence of the government's mismanagement and giving priority to other matters that now we are going to be left with barely 45 minutes of debate on this.

Submissions received by the committee were very critical of the government primarily over the key issues of workforce, financing, bonds and information access. The inquiry heard evidence that some smaller facilities would be worse off financially and some forced to amalgamate to survive or, worse, even close down. Key criticisms in the inquiry focused on the $1.6 billion cut for ACFI from the forward estimates. The minister justified these ACFI changes with assertions that providers had been guilty of alleged rorting, but this spurious allegation was trashed at the estimates hearing in February 2013 when it was revealed that there had been no provider prosecutions in the last five years.

Another key point is that only 40 per cent of residential aged-care providers are currently operating in the black and many providers referred to the negative impact of the ACFI cuts in their submissions, citing reductions ranging from thousands of dollars to millions of dollars. On another front, submissions were critical of the Aged Care Funding Authority which was established last year, another bureaucracy. Indeed, this whole package of bills has added much more bureaucracy and more regulation to what is now one of the most, if not the most, heavily regulated sectors in Australia.

The government then sought to introduce a brand new regime in relation to the whole bond system, allegedly to stop providers ripping off the system with huge bonds. What do we know about these alleged huge bonds? There was the Prime Minister with Minister Butler on 20 April last year tarring all providers with the same brush by leaving the impression that they were charging so-called super bonds of more than $2 million. The Senate inquiry received evidence that totally refuted this nonsense from the government. Presently there are just over 21,000 accommodation bonds in Australia with only 124 of these between $750,000 and $1 million. Despite the minister's expansive allegations last year, there are only 33 bonds in excess of $1 million. We understand that in the whole of Australia there is only one bond of $2 million, paid by somebody in Western Australia who resides in the top floor of a lovely aged-care facility in Perth. Once again, why let facts get in the way of a good story? So much for the rorting.

The issue which has caused the greatest angst in this process has been the workforce supplement. It all started on 5 March this year when gaffe prone Minister Butler not only insulted the people of Western Sydney but also insulted the aged-care sector by announcing wage increases that the whole sector knows will never materialise. It was a hastily put together announcement designed just for the Prime Minister's last-ditch five-day sleepover in Western Sydney. But peak provider bodies boycotted the workforce supplement announcement with the minister forced to make his announcement in front of a church in southern Sydney because he could not find an aged-care facility willing to host his initiative. The front page of the Australian that day revealed that the supplement, which is the so-called flagship of the government's package, was nothing more than a backdoor scheme to increase union membership. So, despite the protestations of the minister, there is no doubt that the cuts in ACFI are linked to the workforce supplement. The icing on this sad and sorry cake is that the minister admitted that he did not know how many of the nation's 352,000 aged-care workers would benefit from the supplement that is now being put up. Isn't that just so inspiring from this minister? But we do know from the Senate inquiry that many providers cannot afford to access the funding and therefore many staff will not get wage rises.

My point to the government is that if you really had the interests of aged-care workers at heart you would have used existing mechanisms to pay to providers funds for increases in wages, not force providers to have to enter into enterprise bargaining agreements with so many strings attached. We know from the Senate inquiry that providers will not be able to afford the cost of the EBAs and the on-costs associated with that and therefore providers will not be able to pay their workers more. But this did not stop the minister from making false and misleading statements such as this one, which I found on page 47 in the winter edition of The Retiree. There is a picture with the Labor logo in the corner. It says that from July $1.2 billion will flow into the pay packets of 350,000 aged-care workers across Australia thanks to federal Labor. Well, that is a blatant lie. You know what? It was actually authorised by none other than Mark Butler with the address which is presumably the electorate office of Minister Butler. What a blatant lie the minister is perpetrating. He knows very well that there are going to be very few—