Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Serious Incident Response Scheme and Other Measures) Bill 2020 introduces a serious incident response scheme that will respond to and take steps to prevent incidents of abuse and neglect of older Australians in residential aged care. This includes those receiving flexible care delivered in a residential aged-care setting. The scheme will provide greater protections for older Australians by taking into account broader instances of abuse and neglect and by introducing more robust requirements for residential aged-care providers to respond and report.

From 1 April 2021 this bill introduces legislative requirements that will build provider capacity to identify risk and respond to incidents if and when they occur. By imposing these requirements the scheme is expected to drive learning improvements that will reduce the number of preventable incidents in the future.

The bill will also provide new powers to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to enforce the requirements of the scheme and the aged-care responsibilities of approved providers and related offences more generally. These are standard regulatory powers which will provide the commission with a more graduated suite of powers for ensuring compliance and protecting consumers. Additional information-gathering powers are also provided to ensure the commission is equipped to obtain the information it requires to administer the scheme and the commission's regulatory framework more broadly.

The scheme complements and supports existing regulatory settings, including the integrated expectations of the Aged Care Quality Standards, the Charter of Aged Care Rights and open disclosure requirements. Together these will support residential aged-care providers to engage in risk management and continuous improvement to deliver safe and quality care to older Australians.

I thank colleagues who have contributed to this bill. The health, safety and wellbeing of older Australians is of utmost importance to all of us and the Australian government. Any abuse of a person in a residential care facility is unacceptable. It is important that these incidents are reported, managed and prevented from occurring in the future.

I wish to table an addendum to the explanatory memorandum, which responds to concerns raised by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. This addendum clarifies how subordinate legislation will operate to support the arrangements in this bill. I thank the committee for their comments.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.