Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on this legislation, the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Care Charges (Amendment) Bill 2014. This package of legislation introduces several amendments to aged care and health related legislation as part of the recent reforms to the aged-care system in Australia. I should say that some of it unpicks some of the recent reforms to the aged-care system in Australia.

Together, these bills enact the government's 2014 budget measure to 'reprioritise' the aged care workforce supplement, amend the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 to support the implementation of the My Aged Care Gateway, make minor clarifying and technical amendments arising from recent changes to aged care, and amend the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Act 1995 to overcome current impediments to the recovery of past home care costs for care recipients who receive a compensation payment.

Most of these points the Greens support and do not have a problem with. They are quite sensible amendments. It is unfortunate that they have been lumped in with the government's so-called reprioritisation of the aged care workforce supplement. This is one of the budget measures that the government have unfortunately combined with these other measures and something they said they would change when they come into government. Unfortunately, it is one of those promises that they are keeping, unlike the promise not to cut the ABC or SBS or myriad other promises that they have failed to keep. I wish they had failed to keep this one.

The Greens, unfortunately, cannot support this package of legislation, because the government are changing the aged care workforce supplement. It was a part of the Living Longer, Living Better package and we believe it was a key part of that package in that it addressed the historically poor wages for those working in aged care. Unfortunately, while we would like to support this package of legislation we cannot because of that particular measure.

The Australian Greens participated extensively in the debate and the negotiations on the Living Longer, Living Better aged care reform package that was passed under the previous government. We secured a number of important amendments to the aged-care package. The aged care workforce supplement is a component of the aged care reform package, as I said earlier, and provides a mechanism to improve the wages of aged-care workers. Under the Living Longer, Living Better package there were changes to the workforce supplement because some of the aged-care providers expressed concern about some of the mechanisms. So some changes were negotiated, which I know some of the unions and aged-care workers were not particularly happy with. In fact, some amendments eased some of the requirements, but we believe it met some concerns of the providers.

It is extremely disappointing that a government that says it cares about older Australians—and I will come to that point in more detail shortly—sees fit to cut the key mechanism that ensures that aged-care workers get pay rises and that the supplement is actually spent on aged-care workers. Under this bill, the $1.1 billion funding for the aged care workforce supplement will be redirected to residential care, home care and flexible care providers of aged-care services in the form of an increase in their basic subsidy.

This is the key part: this measure removes the guarantee of an increase in the wages paid to workers in the aged-care sector and that is extremely important. In the past we have seen that, without this guarantee, extra payments to providers do not end up in the pockets of aged-care workers, despite providers—and I am not slagging off providers—having made assurances in the past that when they got some extra funding it would go towards paying additional wages for aged-care workers. It has not resulted in better wages for aged-care workers.

The Greens oppose the government's efforts to dismantle this important component of the Living Longer, Living Better package of aged-care reforms. We remain strong advocates for the aged-care sector, including aged-care workers. They are an essential component of the aged-care sector and here we have the government undermining the very mechanism that could ensure that some of the lowest paid workers in this country actually do get better pay for the services they provide.

Aged-care workers are some of the lowest paid workers in Australia. Aged-care workers will miss out on this funding. As the name suggests, this funding was to be a supplement and would improve the wages of some of the lowest paid workers in this country. The replacement of this subsidy will not end up helping aged-care workers. As I said before, past experience has shown that in fact that is not the case. We maintain that the money should go towards the challenge of ensuring that some of the lowest paid workers in this country get the necessary wages and conditions that they deserve for the work and effort they put in.

We have difficulty attracting skilled and trained workers to the aged-care sector. Surveys of the aged-care sector show that service providers can experience difficulties in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of appropriately skilled and trained workers to care for the growing number of older Australians.

Competitive wages are essential for attracting and retaining high-quality aged-care workers and ensuring that the highest possible quality of care for older Australians is maintained. This measure undermines that.

A key finding of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into dementia and complex behaviours was the absolute importance and essential nature of having highly skilled and trained staff who actually have the skills and competencies to support people with dementia. It was emphasised again and again that staff who have the skills are essential for managing behaviours. If they are trained and skilled in understanding the complex behaviours and cognitive impairments of those with dementia, it actually changes the whole nature of the way that people with dementia are treated in the aged-care setting. If workers understand the nature of dementia and how to manage these complex behaviours, it actually affects the restraints that must be used, such as chemical or physical restraints, and it changes the person's whole life experience and quality of life in the aged-care facility and also in the home-care setting.

Senator Polley has gone through the issues around the dementia supplement. That, of course, is also very important, but the training of people in understanding dementia and cognitive impairment and how their treatment of people with dementia—including, as I said, the need for restraints—changes the quality of life of sufferers is crucial. This sort of cutting of wages deters people from going into that sector and certainly does not provide encouragement to get training, because it is specialty training, in dementia and the cognitive issues that go with dementia. It was quite plain during the inquiry that we held that it is essential that people have this training. Where are the incentive, support and reward for people to attain the very important, specific skills that are needed? There is no incentive when the government, by cutting the supplement, says, 'You're not important—we're going to treat you as second-class citizens and continue to treat you as some of the lowest paid workers in this country. We don't value the contribution that you make. We don't care about the fact that, if the pay is so low, the sector won't be able to attract workers or encourage people to attain the skills that are needed to deliver the services that are needed.'

All the statistics at the moment show the dreadful fact that the rate of dementia is increasing in this country, and we can expect that far more people with dementia will need support and care as the population ages. Already we have a growing older population in this country. We know there will be a growing cohort of people suffering from dementia who will need high levels of care—it will not be called high care and low care into the future under the reforms. The government is saying that, as the population ages and the cohorts of people with dementia increase, we will not ensure that the people caring for those people will be rewarded through better wages.

Aged-care workers have fought for years to get better recompense for the hard yards they put in—and they do put in the hard yards. We need to attract more workers to aged care. I have just said how providers are saying that they are finding it hard to find and attract people to work in this sector—because the wages are so low and because it is challenging work, particularly in attaining the skills that are needed and particularly in caring for those with dementia, with the resultant complex behaviours.

The aged-care sector in this country is under increasing pressure as Australia's median age continues to rise. Australia's population is growing and ageing as a result of longer life expectancy and changes to fertility rates. With existing employment models, this trend will see a smaller and younger workforce faced with a growing number of older Australians. It is a bad time to abandon the aged-care sector and aged-care workers when, for the first time in Australia's history, we have more people turning pension age each year and we have an ageing workforce. This will place enormous pressure on the system. How will we ensure that we have a trained and skilled workforce in our aged-care sector? We also know that the trend has been toward the higher end—at the moment, it is called high care. We know that people have been staying at home longer and moving into aged care when they are older and have more complex issues—in other words, requiring high-end care. What we are saying here is that we do not care about the workers who are working in that sector. We do not care about the fact that we need to be attracting people into the sector.

On that, we know that there is a growing need for care in other sectors. We know that under the National Disability Insurance Scheme we are going to have an increasing need for carers and that we are not ramped up for that yet. That is an issue that requires very serious discussion. We also know that under the HACC we are also going to need more people working in the care sector. In aged care we also know that we are going to have a growing need for care. What we are not seeing is investment through the supplement into providing the necessary wages and growth of wages for those that are working in aged care. It sends a very poor message to existing workers in the aged-care sector, and it also sends a poor message to those that may be thinking of going into the aged-care sector.

I will come back to the issue of not necessarily believing that employers and providers are actually going to pass on this supplement as it goes more directly to the providers. We know from past experience that, where additional money has been put into the system, it has not translated into a growth in aged-care workers' pay. In fact, if it had, we might not be in the situation that we are in now, where our aged-care workers are some of the lowest paid in the country. So, at the very time when we are talking about the escalating requirements and skills required for aged care with an ageing population, we are not investing in the workforce itself. We are going to find ourselves down the track with the lowest paid workers in the system, and in the care system in particular, at a time when we desperately need to be attracting people into working in the aged-care sector.

This is a step backwards, and it is nothing short of an ideological approach by the government because they do not want to see a mechanism that ensures workers continue to get paid. The previous government did compromise on this particular issue and make it a bit easier for the providers to be able to negotiate on the timing of this supplement and the way it rolls out. We agreed to that reluctantly, because we thought it compromised the ability of providers to attract workers and of workers to get a slight increase in their wages, but we thought it was a satisfactory outcome where providers were, we thought, happy. This is an approach by government, ideologically driven, that undermines the wages and support for some of the lowest paid workers in the country.

We do not support this change. It is untenable that the government thinks it is okay to take money—we are talking about $1.1 billion here—that should go to aged-care workers who do a magnificent job helping older Australians and providing care and support to some of the most vulnerable members of our community—that is, older Australians and, in particular, those older Australians with dementia who have to receive specialist support for complex behaviours.

This undermines the future of aged care, just changing it to put the money into the pockets of providers—who do an excellent job, and again I will say I am not having a go at providers. But, when additional supplements have been provided without the necessary requirements for that money to be translated into workers' pay, we know from past experience that that has not occurred. This will happen again. If I were an aged-care worker at the moment, I would be extremely concerned that I would not see the increase in my wages that I expected when Living Longer Living Better was announced. Part of aged-care reform has to include increased recompense and remuneration for the workers who keep that system going, because (a) it is fair and (b) we are not going to see an aged-care system that provides the sort of care that is required if we do not address the issue of remuneration for the workers that provide that care.

It is greatly disappointing that I am unable to support this legislation, despite the fact that there are many amendments that we could support. The overriding focus of this legislation is gutting the wages of some of the most vulnerable and lowest paid workers in this country, and the Greens cannot support that move.