Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Turnbull. And then we had Mr Morrison. All three of them have to take responsibility for having failed to respond to any of those reports. And then Senator Colbeck said, 'We instituted the royal commission'—because he had no choice. It became so apparent how disgraceful the situation was that they actually had to go ahead with a royal commission. But they'd already had 20 reports before that. Talk to anybody, talk to any Australian who has had any interaction with aged care in the last 10 to 15 years, and certainly in the last nine, and they will tell you that it was a disaster.

So I want to say to the Australian people who, in the most recent election, voted for a range of reasons to bring to bear this Albanese Labor government: thank you for the trust you place in us. There were many people, millions of you, who voted for all sorts of reasons. To those who voted primarily, from their experience of aged care, for the change that they know is needed for this country for aged care, I say: thank you for giving us your vote; thank you for supporting the delivery of an Albanese Labor government; thank you for enabling us to change the ministry, to get on with the proper job of delivering for this country.

We are here doing our job so that Australians can get on with their lives. That's what they expect of us. That's what you expect of us: to show up, to take it seriously, to listen to the truth about what's really happening in our country and to respond wisely and carefully with the taxpayers' dollars that come here—to look after not just the loud and strong, whose voices echo through these chambers, but the weak and vulnerable, who are desperate for a government that will give them the essential care that they need. We're doing it by bringing this bill, the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022, to this place. There's been so much delay. There can be no further delay. The sort of tinkering that we just heard from Senator Colbeck gives a bit of a hint of some of the games that they might want to play. It's over for those who are sitting there in opposition. You had nine years to sort it out. Don't muck around. Don't get in the way. Even in the consideration of business, we've got delay in attending to other matters. Australians deserve better than delay and game playing. We need to get on with the job of fixing the messes that the former government left behind.

There is indeed a crisis in our aged-care system. Many of you would have seen the 'Who cares?' Four Corners investigation. That was aired in 2018—2018! Think about the suffering. Think about the grief; the loss; the suffering; the hurt; the mental health challenges; and the despair of people working in aged care and of families engaged in aged care. It's been four years since that report on the telly that opened the eyes of all Australians to the horrifying picture that lay behind the doors of aged-care centres in Australia, where profit-taking and profit-making took precedence over care. It's hard to actually say, to speak into the record the descriptions of, what we saw there: ants and maggots crawling over weeping wounds; dirty bandages that hadn't been changed in days; disgusting and putrid food being served; mistreatment; assaults; abuse—that was what was described. And we saw it.

I congratulate the fourth estate and Four Corners for putting that on the television, as confronting as it was—because the previous government hid the truth. The Liberal-National Party government, under those three leaders, misled the Australian people. They hid from the Australian people what their agencies knew. And they did nothing about it. That's why this is a late clean-up of a mess, but it's the first opportunity that Labor has had to do anything about it.

The Four Corners report itself pointed out:

In the responses we received from across the country it's clear that hurt comes in many forms … not just the horrific tales that have captured headlines but every day stories of neglect and inattention, poor quality food, lack of personal care, boredom and heart-breaking loneliness.

The royal commission went on to even further expose the disgraceful state of the reality lived by some of our finest Australians who've found themselves in aged care. The interim report of the royal commission was a single-word title, and it describes the reality that this government—this new, Albanese government—will make the effort to correct. That title was Neglectand that's what happens when a government doesn't do its job.

So here we are with the legislation. We're up for the task. You trusted us. You gave us your vote. We are doing what we said we would, with multiple pieces of legislation to fulfil the commitments that Labor made to the Australian people that were put into the House yesterday. This is the first one that we're getting to debate here, and I'm very proud that it's about aged care, because, if we don't care for the aged, who've given so much to our country, what sort of country are we? Not the country I know we can be; not the country that you want us to be; not the country we need to be for the people we love and care about.

So this bill is going to do a range of things. If you were here when Senator Colbeck was making his contribution, he talked about different schedules. It all sounds a bit like gobbledegook sometimes, when you don't actually sit in the Senate all day and listen to it, but schedules are the bits of the bill that are going to do things.

This is what this bill is going to do. It's going to introduce a new aged-care subsidy calculation, because that's about money. The money is not working properly in this sector. We have to make Australian taxpayers' money work properly and deliver the care that is required. Currently it's not working. We need to provide a legislative basis for a star rating system, and I would like to say some more about that if time allows me. We are going to introduce a code of conduct, because some people don't seem to know what to do. And we will have a banning-order scheme. We are going to extend the Serious Incident Response Scheme to aged care delivered in home settings. We are going to strengthen the governance of approved providers, because too many dodgy operators got away with doing the wrong thing for way too long. We are going to enhance information sharing across related sectors so that information moves properly with people, particularly between the health sector and the aged-care sector. We're going to increase financial and prudential oversight. It makes me livid when I hear Liberal and National Party members in particular talk as if they've got everything economic sorted. They definitely haven't. The economics of this haven't worked. We need to make this system work so much better to deliver. We're going to broaden the function of the renamed Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. We will also address issues with the informed consent arrangements with respect to the use of restrictive practices in residential aged care.

I just want to speak in the time remaining to me on what a couple of these critical elements in these schedules in the bill are going to do. I've talked about the terrible circumstances in which too many young Australians found themselves in aged care. I want to speak particularly to the establishment of a safer and more accountable system for our elderly residents. We will not delay in doing this. That's why we have made it the first order of business. The bill must not lapse. I urge all senators from all parties who have been elected here to get on board with Labor and get this done. It's appropriate that this bill pass as soon as possible.

We are going to change the existing but outdated aged-care funding instrument. This will create a new model for calculating aged-care subsidies. It's called the AN-ACC, the Australian National Aged Care Classification. That model is set to commence on 1 October 2022. We're doing this as fast as we possibly can—responsibly but quickly.

With regard to some of those appalling images that, for those who saw the Four Corners report, will be with us forever, the Serious Incident Response Scheme is going to be expanded. It will be expanded in a way that will establish obligations for providers of home care and flexible care in community settings to report and respond to incidents and to take action to prevent those events from recurring.

This isn't rocket science, but the former government delayed bringing these things in. We have to close the gaps that existed previously in the system. I'm sure, like me, you agree that accountability through all aspects of our aged-care system has to be fundamental, observed and enforced. We are determined to bring the care back to aged care.