Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition amendment on sheet 3077 relates to the complaints system. I'm keen to get some information from the minister for the time based obligations put around complaint determinations. Minister, we've been getting a number of calls to my office, as I'm sure everybody has to their offices, in relation to this.

Yesterday, my office was contacted by a woman in South Australia. Her mother had a homecare package, but she had to go to hospital because she had a stroke. The daughter contacted the homecare provider that was providing her homecare package and advised that her mother was in hospital and sought to have her package services cancelled for the duration of time that her mother was in hospital. This didn't happen, and, according to the constituent, the services that were contracted to the provider continued to be provided by that particular provider for the three months that the lady who'd had the stroke was in hospital.

There are a couple of questions here. First of all, after continuous complaints to the provider, the services were eventually stopped, after three months. She complained to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission some time afterwards. Not only did they continue for three months but the money was taken out of her package for the services over that period of time, so a quarter of her annual package was taken during that time. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission said it is only possible to ask an aged-care provider to make those changes; it cannot force them to make those changes. Under the new provisions that exist in this bill, in relation to the Complaints Commissioner, how would this situation have been resolved, and how would it be any different to how this appears to have been dealt with under existing complaints provisions?