Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

What we will know is that Australia has an ageing population. More of us are heading toward retirement age and more of us are winding down to enjoy a little more of life and looking to enjoy the fruits of our labours, having contributed to this country's success and prosperity. Under this government, how much of that fruit remains in the nest is another story. The increase in the cost of living is having a serious impact on our most vulnerable Australians as well as poor standards in aged care. It's too expensive to receive the care that they need, to purchase medicines and to buy groceries. Rents are going up, taxes have increased, energy bills are up. The people who have toiled their whole life and have done their bit are now suffering at the hands of this government's heartless policies. They're too busy virtue signalling, helping the union mates and lining the pockets of their wind and solar industry friends. It is easy to sit here and attack this government, but we actually do want to work constructively on crucial matters to ensure that Australians get the best out of life. And all Australians want and expect our older Australians to be well supported and cared for in our community, including in residential aged-care homes.

Those of us on this side of the chamber remain committed to supporting the health, safety and wellbeing of older Australians and understand the important role that aged-care providers, care workers and nurses play in ensuring this support is provided in residential care settings. The coalition is supporting this bill because we do believe that the desire to permanently establish an inspector-general for aged care, transitioning the temporary arrangements for the interim inspector-general to a permanent one, is a good thing to ensure more oversight in the operations of the aged-care sector and to ensure better quality of life and safer care for all. The aged-care sector delivers a fundamental service to older Australians by protecting them, caring for them and supporting them on their journey of ageing gracefully, peacefully and with dignity. We need transparency and accountability throughout the system, and with the installation of an inspector-general we believe that any underlying issues can and will be better dealt with. The coalition supports the independence of the inspector-general and endorses the separation of the inspector-general from the Department of Health and Aged Care and other government bodies to ensure the office remains impartial and able to conduct itself without the concerns of politically motivated interference.

Given the number of deaths in aged-care homes since the pandemic was exacerbated under this government, it is very welcome to see this government finally listening to the coalition's calls to do something to improve the outcomes for our elderly Australians and to implement reasonable and rational measures to protect and to better serve our elderly Australians. We all remember that during the election campaign, aside from other things, Minister Anthony Albanese promised every aged-care home would have a nurse on site at all times by July this year. Well, Prime Minister, it has been over a year under your watch and aged-care homes are closing down. In fact, to the best of our knowledge we have been able to ascertain that tragically more than 30 homes have closed down. And we know that these closures impact families so directly when we have long-term married couples, one of whom needs to go into aged care, the local aged care home closes and that couple is then forced to separate not only because of the residency in the aged-care facility but because of the distance that they now have to travel to visit their spouse. This is all the result of this government's expedited 24/7 registered nurses requirement, which was foisted upon the sector during a severe workforce crisis. This is just standard play from Labor: increased demand without increasing supply. Economics 101 has been replaced by 'Albo-nomics' and 'Chalmers-nomics', but they still haven't worked this out across our country and across many sectors.

Worse still are the administrative burdens this government has imposed on registered nurses. The onsite registered nurse must report every period of 30 minutes or more that a registered nurse was not on site or on duty and the reasons. Heaven help some of these hardworking aged-care staff, who are put under this additional administrative burden whilst they're trying to deal at times with outbreaks of RSV or COVID, which is still occurring. It's happened a couple of times recently at the residential care facility my mum is at. I can tell you, I'd much prefer that the staff are there making sure that no-one has had a fall, that people are in their rooms when they should be and that there are no adverse impacts being felt by them. But, no—every 30 minutes, this insane administrative burden is crippling small regional, rural and remote providers in particular.

When in government, the coalition called the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety to ensure that our oldest and most vulnerable Australians received care, supports and respect for their dignity and to recognise the important contribution that they have made over their lifetimes to society. We delivered billions in reforming the sector to provide respect, care and dignity to our senior Australians. Our 2022-23 budget responded to 10 recommendations of the royal commission and built on our existing five pillars of aged-care reform. What are those pillars, you might ask? The coalition strongly supported home care, supporting senior Australians who choose to remain in their homes. We should allow them the comfort and support that they desire in their twilight years. They've contributed years and years to our society, and it's only fair that we give something back for those contributions rather than casting them aside now they're no longer useful to us. They are useful to us. They have wisdom, they have insight and they have experience, and we should in fact be spending more time looking to them for advice, spending time with them and having that intergenerational connection that will improve both our lives and the workforce by helping us avoid the mistakes of the past. We should give our elderly the honour and dignity they deserve.

This is a failure, in many ways, across the West. There are many cultures around the world that place a far greater amount of respect on their elders, and I think we would do well to learn from them. Even our Indigenous Australians honour their elders. We acknowledge their elders every time we start up a speech or event in this country, yet we don't want to give any honour or respect to the rest of our elderly Australians.

We want to improve and simplify residential aged-care services, sustainability and access, not make operating those services more difficult, like I said earlier, by making it harder for aged-care homes to comply. We see homes shut down because they can't meet the restrictions, requirements and pressures put on them by this government. We look to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to improve residential aged care. Thankfully, the addition of an inspector-general begins this task of ensuring there is quality and safety in our homes.

The coalition government understood the importance of the workforce by supporting and growing a better-skilled care workforce. Crucially, we need to entice nurses and healthcare workers to join the aged-care ranks and we need to retain those workers. As I've said, we're an ageing population, and we're still experiencing a crisis in the Australian workforce at present across all sectors. This needs to be remedied as soon as possible, especially if we were to—God forbid—experience another health crisis. Of course, the coalition, when in government, supported new legislation that would provide stronger governance.

It is imperative that the Albanese government now continues our work to support the aged-care sector. This is a step in the right direction, and we commend the government on that, but a lot of damage has been and continues to be done. Our elderly Australians—whoever they are, wherever they're from, from all walks of life, all classes and subsections of our community—all deserve the dignity and respect the rest of us enjoy, if not more because they've laid the foundations of what we proudly stand on today. I know there are some in this chamber and elsewhere who believe these foundations, our Australian foundations, deserve to be destroyed and replaced. But those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and it happens all too often. The irony is that they believe they are the more virtuous among us. They believe they are the ones who can fix our problems. But their beliefs are built on antihuman sentiment. They want to remove the dignity of the elderly, not restore or amplify it. To them, the elderly represent a bygone era that must now be erased. A telling sign of the calibre of a society is how they treat their most vulnerable. I believe Australia to be a country with people of good character and people who believe in giving everyone a fair go regardless of who they are. This is why we must continue to do our part for ageing Australians, like what's being addressed in this bill today.