Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate:

(a) notes that:

  (i) the former Treasurer, Mr Scott Morrison, was the architect of significant cuts to aged care to the tune of $1 billion in the 2016-17 Budget,

  (ii) Mr Morrison's $1 billion cut to aged care came on top of the almost $500 million from aged care funding Mr Morrison cut in the 2015 MYEFO,

  (iii) you don't fix aged care by cutting funding to it, and

  (iv) after 5 years of cuts, dithering and inaction on aged care, the government has essentially called for a royal commission into itself;

(b) condemns:

  (i) the Morrison Government for failing to take responsibility for these cuts, and

  (ii) the current Prime Minister's refusal to rule out further cuts to aged care in Australia;

(c) calls on the Federal Government to ensure the Royal Commission into Aged Care examines the impact of the Liberals' years of cuts; and

(d) calls on the Federal Government not to wait for the royal commission to start fixing the crisis it has created.

I rise to speak about the current Prime Minister's shameful record on aged care. What do you get when you cross an inept government, which has spent five years ignoring aged care, with a new Prime Minister who was the architect of cuts that have absolutely gutted aged care? You get an aged-care sector in crisis. That's what you get.

He can deny it all he likes, but it was Mr Morrison's cuts to aged care that brought us to the aged-care crisis we're seeing now. It's mystifying that this out-of-touch government have decided that something is terribly wrong in aged care. I've been pushing for and calling on those opposite to take ageing and aged care seriously for years, but my calls have fallen on deafened ears. They were too busy trying to get the numbers for the former Prime Minister's job to focus on what really matters. But now, with an election around the corner, we've got a new Prime Minister acting like he's a friend to older Australians and proclaiming that aged care is a priority for him. Well, I don't buy a word of it and neither does the Australian community.

Mr Morrison, if aged care is such a priority for you, why keep it out of cabinet? If aged care is really a priority for you, when are you going to respond or action the dozens of reviews and reports on aged care that are sitting collecting dust? If this is really a priority for you, why haven't you committed funding to the Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce you so proudly announced last week? And, if you really care about older Australians, when are you going to provide an adequate solution to the home care package waitlist crisis?

As I said, the new Prime Minister is the man behind cuts that have gutted aged care and put the sector under immense pressure. Mr Morrison's cuts to aged care as Treasurer have been listed in this place all week, but I will keep going through them until those opposite step up and take responsibility. One of Mr Morrison's first acts as Treasurer was to slash almost $500 million from the aged-care funding in the 2015 MYEFO. He followed this with an even bigger cut—$1.2 billion from the aged-care funding in the 2016 budget. And, even as the waiting list for home care packages blew out to more than 108,000, Mr Morrison's budget this year did not deliver one extra dollar of funding to aged care—not one extra dollar. And don't forget the 26,000 residential aged-care places he also cut in this year's budget.

The Prime Minister must take responsibility for his part in this. He cannot pretend his cuts as Treasurer were nothing to do with him or that they have had no impact in the community. Mr Morrison's response to his cuts has been appalling. He spent this week belittling his cuts to aged care and accusing us of lying for calling him out on them. You only have to look at the budget papers signed off by the Prime Minister when he was Treasurer. His name is on the papers in black and white. These are the cuts that he's denying. Page 101 of budget paper 2 says, 'The Government will achieve efficiencies of $1.2 billion over four years'. The budget papers don't lie. Under Mr Morrison, aged care received one of the harshest cuts in his budget: $1.2 billion slashed from residential aged-care subsidies for residents. In his budget speech on 3 May 2016, Mr Morrison said, 'In this budget we will continue to cut unnecessary waste'. Mr Morrison, do you still consider aged care to be unnecessary waste?

In budget estimates hearings the same year, the government made it clear that it expected aged-care providers to ensure the same high quality of care would be delivered despite the huge funding cut. Let's be clear: you cannot slash aged care and expect the same level of care to be provided. It just can't happen. You do not fix aged care and the crisis that it's in by cutting the funding.

I remind you that Mr Morrison made this $1.2 billion cut without any idea of the impact it would have on the most vulnerable older members of our community. Well, I can tell you that older Australians are feeling the full impact of this cut. Just look at Monday night's Four Corners program. When Mr Morrison made this cut, he was cutting from those in aged-care homes with the highest and most complex needs. That's what this Prime Minister cut when he was Treasurer. This cut was not about aged-care residents missing out on a glass of wine with their dinner; it was about the frailest and most vulnerable people missing out on things like physiotherapy to manage chronic pain, or the oversight of specialist medications for cardiac conditions, dementia and Parkinson's disease. Mr Morrison's cuts were the difference between receiving physiotherapy to manage chronic pain and living with chronic pain. What a disgrace! The fact that the new Prime Minister could stand in front of the cameras and in the House of Representatives all this week and deny his cuts is unbelievable. Frankly, it tells you everything you need to know about the new Prime Minister and what he's all about. He's a wolf dressed up as a sheep crying crocodile tears. Older Australians deserve better than a Prime Minister who cuts funding to aged care and then lies about it.

Those opposite had it pretty good when they came into government. Labor had done all the heavy lifting to transform our aged-care system with the Living Longer Living Better reforms, and the opposition at that time were part of those deliberations. All those opposite had to do was oversee the rollout of our reforms in a timely manner. But that was too hard for them. They bungled it because they never had their eye on the ball. They've always treated aged care as an afterthought. You only have to think back to when Bronwyn Bishop was the minister, and the kerosene baths, and the Howard government's reputation for the way they treated older Australians. When Mark Butler became the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, he set about transforming the aged-care sector with the sector, to lead the way. Those who have come after him, the three ministers in the last five years, have failed older Australians.

Those opposite have always underestimated the level of leadership required to oversee the rollout and implementation of aged-care reforms. Mr Morrison says aged care is a priority, but the portfolio still doesn't have a seat at the cabinet table. The current Minister for Aged Care, Ken Wyatt, has good intentions but has been left screaming from the sidelines to progress the reforms that are needed in the aged-care sector. The pattern is clear: Mr Morrison is following in Mr Turnbull's and Mr Abbott's footsteps and he cannot be trusted with aged care. We are in the midst of an aged-care crisis because of the lack of actions by those on the other side of the chamber.

The government's call for this royal commission is frankly an admission of failure. They have essentially called a royal commission into themselves because they've been in charge. They've had the responsibility as the government for five years, and we have nothing to show for it except an aged-care sector that is in crisis. They've done nothing but fail older Australians at every turn for the past five years, and now they don't know what to do or how to do it. That's what this royal commission is all about.

The Prime Minister must guarantee that: (1) he will not wait for the royal commission to finish before he starts acting on the issues facing the sector now; and (2) that the royal commission examines the impacts of reduced funding through the Aged Care Funding Instrument; the adequacy of short- and long-term funding of the-aged care sector; the challenges around ensuring there is long-term sustainability of the aged-care system; the adequacies of care requirements for residents in aged-care homes; retirement village living arrangements; poor access to aged-care services in regional, rural and remote Australia, including the dislocation of families; improving transparency of information to consumers, their families and carers; the challenges around ensuring there is a viable well-paid and trained work force now and into the future; and reducing stigma for older Australians.

This royal commission cannot become their latest excuse to do nothing. There are about 14 reviews, reports and inquiries still sitting on the minister's desk without action, collecting dust. The government has cherrypicked its way through a number of key reports and reviews, but piecemeal solutions for an aged-care system in a deepening crisis are just not good enough. Older Australians and their families deserve better than this.

The government's lack of response to the dozens of reviews and reports speaks volumes about where they position older Australians on its list of priorities. Take, for example, the interim report from the Senate inquiry into what happened at Oakden in South Australia—the government has had this interim report for almost a year, but has done nothing about it. The committee was presented with overwhelming, heartbreaking reports from families of the poor quality of personal care. The stories and evidence were harrowing and heart-wrenching, and should have been the trigger for the government to take immediate action. Senator Smith, who's in this chamber, was there and heard the same evidence as I did. It was heartbreaking and soul-destroying for those families to have to go through it again.

Those families have never given up on ensuring that the system is changed—they have been on social media actually commending this government for finally taking some action and calling for this royal commission. But, once again, this government failed to act. It sat on that report. We're at a crucial time in the reform agenda. Older Australians deserve good policies and leadership from government when it counts. After years of inaction, Australia's aged-care system doesn't need more quick fixes from this government; it needs genuine reform backed by real investment.

Equally concerning in the five years of inaction on workforce development, with the exception of scrapping Labor's $1.5 billion Workforce Compact, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments have shown a complete lack of commitment to Australia's aged-care workforce. Aged-care workforce development is one of the biggest challenges facing the sector. With the workforce expected to increase by 300 per cent in the next 30 years, we have to get this right.

Disappointingly, despite saying aged care would be a focus of his new government, Mr Morrison has been silent on workforce development and the Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce's strategy, which is also sitting on the minister's desk. His silence on this strategy shows his commitment to his policy area will be little better than his Liberal predecessors. The lack of a response on this strategy fits a disturbing pattern of cover-ups and inaction on aged care from successive Liberal governments. If the Morrison government is truly serious about aged care, it will respond to this strategy immediately and commit funding to it.

The Turnbull government's top priority must be a real plan to address the waiting list for home care packages. If today's response by the representing minister in question time was anything to go by, heaven help us all, particularly those on the waiting list. I have spoken about the waiting list all week. There are 108,000 people waiting. That's from the government's own figures. They were released months after the due date, but they are the most accurate that we have. The June figures are now due to be released but, once again, the government are sitting on them, hoping that they can scratch a few names off them. But the figures the minister quoted today were some 74,000. The real figure is 108,000, with 54,000 of those waiting not receiving any support at all from the Commonwealth government. Some 88,000 of those people on that waiting list are living with dementia. I hope the minister is listening to this. The waiting list for home care packages is no longer tolerable. The minister and this government have a history of delaying this important data. As I said, the June 2018 data is now late, so we can only imagine the 108,000 would be somewhere closer to 115,000 by now. What are you trying to hide? Are you going to sit on this data for another three months while you try to reduce the names on the waiting list so it doesn't look so bad?

Under the government's watch, there are now over 108,000 people who are waiting for home care packages to be able to stay in their own home. This is much better for them as individuals and it's certainly much better for the bottom line of any federal government. These numbers are absolutely shocking; they're appalling. Mr Morrison's aged-care package in the budget was an absolute hoax. It was a joke and it was absolutely inadequate. The waiting list grows by almost 4,000 older Australians in just three months. The 3,500 new home care packages a year you committed in the budget won't come close to keeping pace with the demand.

The minister has already publicly admitted the government will need to consider other interventions to reduce the waiting list. Now is your chance to live up to your words, Prime Minister, and to do something. Failure to act will only see more and more older people passing away on your watch or going into residential care or acute hospitals while they wait for home care packages. As the list grows longer and longer, fresh stories emerge daily of older Australians waiting years for home care. The average wait time according to the government's data for a level 3 or 4 package is not what the minister today responded to in question time when he was saying there's a three month wait for level 1 or 2. Levels 3 and 4 have a 12 month wait, and we know from those who are contacting our offices that it can be up to 18 months. How can the Prime Minister say it's okay for a 94 year old with high-level needs to be told they'll have to wait years for care? The reality is he probably won't be here.

Finally, the Prime Minister must rule out cuts to aged care. The latest leak reported earlier this week revealed that the government is considering a further cut to the Aged Care Funding Instrument of up to $5.4 billion. The Prime Minister's response is to bury his head in the sand—'Nothing to see here; move on; business as usual'—while his ship is sinking. This is shameful. The Liberals are too busy fighting amongst themselves, instead of focusing on what matters. The Prime Minister may have changed, but the government is falling apart at the seams; they're self-imploding. And the people of Australia are sick of it. They are sick of this government's deception and dysfunction. They want a government focused on the issues that matter to them, a big one being the aged-care sector in Australia. I see lots of worried faces on the other side of the chamber, and the reason is that they can't stop talking about themselves; they can't stop fighting amongst themselves.

The Australian people turned off a long time ago. They've given up on this government because every day they see the chaos that reigns on that side of the chamber. What the Australian people want is a strong government, and I don't believe this government can provide it. They can't provide the security that older Australians need. What we need is an election so that we can elect Bill Shorten. He will have a minister for ageing in the cabinet. He will, as he has already committed to, put dementia and ageing as a national priority. What we need is a minister in cabinet who will argue for older Australians. (Time expired)