Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a lot of pleasure to stand up and talk about aged-care issues more broadly and the government's aged-care reforms but I do need to stress that, of all the guillotines that have fallen on bills in this Senate over the last few days and that will fall over the next few days, it is most shameful that we should have to be rushed in our deliberation of aged-care reforms that go to the heart of how we treat older Australians. It is true that many of the bills that the Senate is debating this week are important bills. It is hard to imagine a bill that is more important than how we deal with aged care in our country. I just want to echo the comments of Senator Fierravanti-Wells. She was quite right: we will be living longer but not necessarily living better as result of the government's aged-care reforms. I will restrict my comments, unfortunately, to five minutes to allow Senator McKenzie, my colleague from Victoria, who I know wants to talk about regional aged-care issues, to do so. It is disappointing that I will not have longer to talk about my own interests, but I think that in the interests of coalition bipartisanship I will share some time with Senator McKenzie.

We need to be clear about what it is that we are addressing here. Let us be clear: we are addressing falling levels of confidence amongst aged-care providers about their ability to deliver aged care. We are talking about increased financial stress amongst rural and regional aged-care providers, particularly those across smaller regional communities like areas that I represent in Western Australia, like the Great Southern. We are talking about the need to properly reward aged-care workers for the effort and the passion that they show in their work, but the proposals for rewarding aged-care workers in the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Bill 2013 and related bills are not suitable.

Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells was very, very correct when she said this is a complex and complicated approach to the future financing of aged care in our country. When we think about why financing is such a critical issue, we only need to look at the comments of Peter Cosgrove some weeks ago when he talked about a shortfall of 66,000 home care places by 2050 and said that 83,000 new nursing home places will be needed over the next nine years. He went on to say that the number of people over 65 will double to six million by 2050, pointing to the fact that aged-care reform and aged-care discussion is central to how we manage ourselves as we go forward as a country. On the issue of the aged-care workforce, he said:

The aged services workforce of 350,000 will need to triple by 2050 to serve the increasing demand for care. The majority of aged care workers are over 45 with a third nearing retirement.

So there is an issue that needs to be addressed. It needs to be addressed in a considered manner. Rushing aged-care bills through the parliament like this is certainly not the way to proceed.

There are many issues that I would have liked to have addressed in my time, but I will just quote from Dr Lucy Morris, who is the CEO of Baptistcare in Perth, in Western Australia, and her very, very considered comments in regard to these particular bills. Dr Lucy Morris, in April this year, said:

I believe that the specific issues of rural, regional and remote Australia providers, particularly in WA, have been ignored. These include issues around the ACLEI changes going to the viability, the implications of the workforce supplement, ongoing issues about access to staff, professional services training and increased costs of service delivery. The 28-day choice of payment methodology is going to cripple them. There is lack of access to capital. There are lower incomes generally in the country. Sixty per cent of our services are provided in rural and regional WA.

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Our concern about our capacity to provide affordable services to the marginalised, in line with our mission, and at the same time generate a surplus to future-proof our services and continue to invest in capital infrastructure, which has come almost to a halt in the last few years, is significant.

Reform of the aged-care sector is important. It should not be done in the way it is being done by this government.