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

We'll hold the minister to that. I raise this because I am super concerned that the government and the department, particularly under quite extensive questioning and scrutiny over the last few weeks—whether it be through the inquiry or through the estimates process—have given us a bit of an impression that there's nothing to see here, everything's under control, it's all going to be fine and we need not worry about the transition arrangements that need to be put in place.

I don't think anybody in this place—I won't verbal you, Minister, but I think we all accept that this is a pretty significant piece of reform. It's absolutely necessary, and, as I said, we all support older Australians having their rights at the centre of the framework in terms of aged-care delivery going forward. That is something that I think we will all welcome very, very much when it occurs. But there remains a massive amount of concern out there in the public that we've been going along on this pathway to deliver this massive amount of reform without really having any clarity around what the transition might look like and what risks are associated with that transition.

I'll quote, word for word, some evidence that we received from Tom Symondson, the CEO of the peak aged-care providers body, when he gave evidence to the inquiry: 'The lack of detail on the rules is a very significant problem for us at the moment.' Since Mr Symondson made that comment, we have not really seen any more detail, and he made the comment that one of their main recommendations around the bill is sensible transition. What we are hearing today is that the department constantly says, 'Nothing to see here; everything will be fine,' and yet, when any questions are asked, the response seems to be, 'We can't do anything until the bill is passed.'

Your response, Minister, when I asked you about the level of risk, was that the department was not worrying about risk; it was worrying about getting the reforms implemented. Can I assume then that there's no contingency built in, in relation to what happens on day one if we find ourselves in a situation where there are some particularly unintended consequences of this largely-unconsulted-on piece of legislation?

I have to say: the inquiry was a fabulous process; it was, I think, one of the most worthwhile inquiries that I have ever been involved in, in order to give a say to everybody who wanted to have their say. We received over 200 submissions. We had some wonderful submissions from older Australians who were concerned about the changes.

One of those was from Hannah from Adelaide. She travelled all the way from Yankalilla, where she lives, to Port Lincoln to give live evidence at the inquiry because she felt so strongly about the arbitrary determination from the department as to caps on gardening and cleaning in home-care packages. We had heard, all the way through the evidence that we'd received, and through estimates as well, that these were determined because they had been estimated and there was some sort of consultative process around how these caps were determined. Hannah turned up and was absolutely fabulous and then, subsequently, she wasn't going to lie down; after turning up to the inquiry, she then prosecuted the issue through the media. She raised the very, very legitimate concern that the one-size-fits-all capping of things like gardening and cleaning is not necessarily going to be able to deliver the outcome we want for older Australians, and that is to keep them in their homes longer. We know that's what they want, but we also know that it's actually the most cost-effective way for taxpayers. Keeping people in their own homes not only keeps them happy, because that's where they want to be, but also is less expensive on the taxpayer in terms of the costs.

So Hannah raised the issue quite rightly. She lives in the Adelaide Hills, and those of you listening from South Australia know that the Adelaide Hills are unfortunately somewhat fire-prone in summer, so, for anybody with a property—not even necessarily a big property with a big garden—preparing for the bushfire season is going to take more than 1½ hours a month, even if they put all those 1½ hours into just one period of time to try and get ready for the bushfire season.

I just really wanted to give a shout-out, as much as anything, to Hannah, because she really, really did go the yards to make sure that we had the information, so that we could provide it to the government, so that they could see the fallacy that sat behind their determination on cleaning and gardening caps, because not everybody lives in the same sort of house; their family homes don't all look the same. Particularly when you get further out from metropolitan areas and go into regional, rural and remote areas, these challenges become quite a lot more exacerbated. So we were really pleased with the efforts of Hannah and others, but a particularly big shout-out to Hannah because she was prepared to go and speak to the media about this.

The caps on cleaning and gardening have now been lifted and people can use their home-care packages in a way that is going to deliver the outcome that they need to enable them to stay in their home. If that means, because of your particular condition, you may need more cleaning than the next person, or if you happen to be living, as Hannah does, in a bushfire-prone area, you will be able to use your package to make sure that your home is safe—and that's the most important thing here. We're not talking about an exhibition garden; we're talking about making sure that your property is safe and that sometimes 1½ hours of gardening a month won't achieve that. So I wanted to say thank you to Hannah. She was amazing—absolutely amazing.

To that end, I am interested in something. The decision has been made that cleaning and gardening will no longer be capped. Other issues were raised in relation to the service list for Support at Home. Two of them were the decision to contain things like showering in independent living as opposed to clinical care. I'm just wondering: on the basis of the evidence that we received during the inquiries around that particular issue, has any consideration been given to showering, as an example, or any other of the items that were contained in the prerelease service list being reclassified?