Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support the amendments to this bill as proposed by Senator Hinch. I would say, personally—and, I know, on behalf of all on my side—Senator Hinch, we have no doubt about your compassion and your support for the most vulnerable in our society. But, for the reasons I will go through, we again take a similar position to Labor and do not support these amendments because we believe that, while they are well intended, they do have unintended consequences. I would remind those in this chamber of the Oakden situation in Adelaide, where in fact they had the highest ratios of staffing—higher, I think, than just about any other aged-care facility in this country—and we are still all very much aware of what happened in that facility, despite the high staffing numbers.

The government also doesn't support the amendments to this bill because all Commonwealth-subsidised aged-care homes are required to have adequate numbers of appropriately skilled staff to meet individual care recipients' needs. There is, however, no Commonwealth legislation that prescribes minimum numbers of staff on duty at any given time. This is because there is actually no single optimum number of staff or combination of staff qualifications that will result in quality aged care in all circumstances, as I think Senator Macdonald has just so eloquently described with regard to regional Australia. Rather, the number of staff required to look after care recipients will change according to the varying needs of the individuals under their care, the facilities' size and design and the way work is organised, including the extent to which services are outsourced. It is the responsibility of individual aged-care homes to use government subsidies to ensure they have the staffing mix and numbers they require for their care recipients to receive the highest quality care required.

In addition, opinions presented at the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry in 2016 into the future of Australia's aged-care workforce were mixed regarding the merits of staff ratios. A number of submitters were not supportive of mandating staffing ratios, mostly because they considered it would not resolve issues and would impose an unnecessary regulatory burden and, of course, cost, which inevitably would be passed on to the residents or their families. So, for all of these reasons, the government does not support these amendments.