Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020. This bill amends the Aged Care Act 1997 to require residential aged-care providers to provide an annual financial transparency report to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, who would make the information publicly available.

It's always interesting to follow Senator Henderson. Obviously, she's had a lapse in memory and she's trying to rewrite history. Her government have now been on the government benches for seven years and, during that seven years, they have not had one capable minister who has sat around the cabinet table and had the authority to support older Australians in this country. They should be ashamed of their record.

But, to get back to this bill, it requires aged-care providers to disclose their income, their spend on food and medication, the amount spent on staff and staff training, accommodation and administration and how much they pay out to their parent body. The Labor Party believe that we need better transparency around funding. In fact, when I was the shadow assistant minister for ageing I spoke about this issue on numerous occasions, advocating for much-needed reform.

People in aged care have been turned into commodities. We have extensive waiting times for people waiting for their approved home-care packages. People in residential aged-care facilities are malnourished, overprescribed drugs and neglected. Yet, at the higher levels of these corporations, we have managers and executives paying themselves excessive wages. This system is broken and in dire need of reform. I have lost count of the number of times that I have stood here and said these very words.

It's clear that the aged-care funding instrument is broken, and we have known that for quite some time. The tool which assesses the needs of residents is the largest source of revenue for residential aged-care providers. It's based on dependency. So there are limited incentives for aged-care providers to actively encourage reablement and rehabilitation in residents. At the same time, many aged-care providers are not commercially viable and many are struggling, particularly in the not-for-profit sector.

More transparency and accounting for public funding—that is the system that must be forthcoming. It's not an option. The time for delay is over. We need that action now. We need better transparency around funding. We need to know that the funding that goes into aged care is actually improving the quality of care and ensuring older Australians can live out the rest of their lives with dignity, proper high-quality care and comfort. Over $20 billion a year is going into the aged-care system to support older Australians to stay at home and in residential care. We need more accountability about where that money is actually going and more oversight of how that money is being spent, because, I can assure you, Australians are not getting value for money. I and many others, including the shadow minister, Julie Collins, have been banging the drums for years, saying that there needs to be more transparency so that older Australians and their loved ones know what is happening.

We don't only need greater financial transparency; we need better access to information on a number of measures—for example, on the number of complaints residential aged-care homes receive, the amount and type of accreditation failures they receive, and the processes to deal with these issues that may arise. We also need the staffing levels and the skills mix of aged-care providers to be publicly available information. Information is power and will lead to better care. This information needs to be easily accessible and in a format that is easy to understand and interpret. Often, when it comes to the decisions to put a loved one into residential care, it's at a time of high emotions and great stress, so people need to be able to make an informed decision about which aged-care home will best suit their loved one. Making this information readily available will ensure that informed decisions are made in the best interests of individuals and their families. As I said, it's such an emotional and highly charged situation, because most people going into residential care now go in with high-dependency needs. So families need to know that their loved ones are going to have support and care and staff around them to ensure they have the best quality care available. Disappointingly, conservative Liberal governments have failed to improve transparency, even though they know that older Australians, their loved ones and carers struggle to navigate their way through the complexity of assessing services. They're unable to gain enough information about aged-care service providers that will engage with their needs and ensure they have certainty that their loved ones will be treated with decency, great care and respect.

There have been many reports and inquiries into the system—all returning similar themes and issues. The Morrison government have now sat on their royal commission interim report into aged care for over a year and have not enacted any reform. It's time to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' Issues around neglect, malnutrition, lack of staff training, overmedication, and sexual and physical abuse have been well documented issues for years and years. Enough is enough. To sit on the interim report and say, 'Well, we have to wait; we can't pre-empt the final royal commission report' is absolute nonsense. We have had three failed aged-care ministers. We have had countless reports. Senator Siewert, who is in the chamber, and I have sat around the table and taken evidence day after day, year in, year out. We all know what the issues are around aged care. We know about the neglect. The interim report was titled Neglect. If that doesn't give a hint to this government that there's a crisis in aged care—after all, they did call the royal commission into their own failings—I don't know what will.

We also know that, once you have a diagnosis of dementia in this country, to a great extent, you become invisible. The carers of people living with dementia become invisible. If it weren't for Dementia Australia and the fantastic work that they do, those people would be forgotten completely by this government. We saw the huge impact the pandemic had on aged care, particularly residential care. It was evident that those people living with dementia in residential care became invisible. For those living with dementia at home, their carers became invisible. I say: enough is enough. We all know the issues. We all know what's been happening over the last seven years in aged care. We know that those on this side of the chamber have been calling for years now to have some reform and to look at the real issues, the broken system around how we fund aged care and the lack of transparency.

We know that the aged-care system under this Liberal government is broken. There has been one failed minister for aged care after another—and the current one is certainly not up to the job. Older Australians are waiting for high-level home-care packages for almost three years so they can get the care they have been approved for. Aged-care staff have been stretched to their physical and emotional ends trying to provide the care that these residents deserve. People are tragically dying of neglect, but we have no action from the Morrison government. More than 30,000 older Australians have died over the last three years waiting for their approved home-care package. It's a disgrace. More than 32,000 older Australians, over two years, entered residential aged care prematurely because they couldn't get the care they needed, the home-care packages they had been approved for. Waiting times for aged care grew by almost 300 per cent under the Liberals, with older Australians across the country forced into lengthy queues, waiting for care.

Finally, 23,000 home-care packages were announced in the budget. But it's a different story in terms of how many have actually been delivered thus far—that is, a big fat zero. Once again, Mr Morrison is there for the photo opportunity but not for the follow-up. Only 2,000 of these packages are level 4—the highest level of care. Compare that to the number of people currently waiting for their approved level 4 package—15,873 older vulnerable Australians. There has been inaction on hundreds of recommendations from more than a dozen reviews, reports and inquiries. Complaints about aged care doubled to almost 8,000 in just one year, but the Prime Minister has failed to properly resource the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to handle these complaints. The Morrison government has failed to fully implement even one aged-care recommendation from a landmark report to stop elder abuse in aged care released in 2017. More than 110,000 calls for help went unanswered by the My Aged Care call centre over the last three years. The Morrison government delivered just 38 emergency food packages to older Australians isolating because of COVID-19—after announcing they would deliver 36,000 packages with funding of $9.3 million. Once again, they are there for the photo opportunity but there is no delivery.

The list of overpromising and underdelivering goes on and on. We know that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID-19 in black and white. This was stated in the royal commission's special report into COVID-19. We know the Morrison government was not prepared for COVID-19 in aged care. Despite the early warnings, it didn't do enough early enough. It's clear that the Morrison government has no idea how to fix the aged-care sector. We know what is happening and what we are seeing, and we have been saying it over and over again, year in year out, since this government came to power: they have done nothing. Well, the buck stops with you, Mr Morrison; it's time to take some action.

Mr Albanese has laid out an eight-point plan as a starting point for this government. We say: take up the challenge, take up our ideas and start putting Australians first. But be assured that Labor will continue to hold the Morrison government to account, both in the parliament and publicly, on the thousands and thousands of Australians who are waiting for home-care packages. Australians generally are very concerned about the aged-care sector, because the majority of Australians will end up using residential aged care at some stage in their lives or have to rely on and wait for the home-care packages. Older Australians deserve so much more. This Prime Minister, at the last election, promised to prioritise aged care and older Australians and he has failed to do that.

We do need transparency in aged care and we do need financial transparency, but we know this is a Liberal government that could not be any less transparent in all their dealings across government. The Morrison government is failing older Australians. They are very transparent, because they're not doing what they gave a commitment to do at the last election—and that was to prioritise the care and support for older Australians. They have failed those people working in this sector, who give their hearts and souls without the resources that they need. We need a minister in government who has some power, has some commitment and has some interest in aged care. Then we might see a change of heart by this government, if we have someone in the cabinet room fighting day in, day out for older Australians, because that's exactly what older Australians need. They need a champion.

We will do our job on this side of the chamber, and it's about time Scott Morrison and his team did theirs.