John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about aged care—what we are actually doing about aged care and the problems which currently face us in Australia. When I presented my maiden speech to this parliament last September, I said:

… we have an obligation to look after our elderly in society, because it was they who handed us this wonderful country. … We must … ensure that our aged-care facilities are properly funded, staffed and maintained.

During the winter break, I travelled extensively around the west of New South Wales, visiting places like the St Anne’s aged-care facility in Broken Hill. Broken Hill has seen many years of winding down of the mining operations and hence the younger members of the community moving off to other areas to seek employment. Thus, that district faces severe problems with those left behind who wish to remain in Broken Hill and the pressure that puts on our aged-care facilities. St Anne’s is a magnificent facility, but they are simply not making enough money to expand to cater for the problems they face there—to give our elderly the proper bedding, caring and nursing they require.

I would like to make a point about the stimulus package the government has introduced, some $60 billion in total, and how the $14.7 billion Building the Education Revolution is basically funding states to make up for many years of states not keeping up with their infrastructure replacement and improvement. Not one cent of this has gone into aged-care facilities and this is very concerning. It is the federal government’s responsibility to look after the elderly. Sure, the states work in conjunction by providing such services as HACC and the ACAT et cetera, but it is essentially the federal government which is responsible for looking after our facilities for the elderly and seeing that they can run at a profit and remain open.

I want to quote some figures from Catholic Health Australia. The heading on their media release states, ‘Outdated law keeps aged care from growing with ageing population’. The media release said:

New nursing home accommodation costs $40.32 per bed per day over 25 years to build and fit out … compared with a legislated cap on the per-bed payment of just $26.88 per day.

The $13.44 shortfall between the cap and the true cost of accommodation is preventing the aged care industry from building desperately-needed new nursing home places.

That is the situation throughout many areas of Australia. We in northern New South Wales have some serious problems. At Inverell, in the community where I live, we have a magnificent aged-care provider named HN McLean Retirement Village. They do a lot of work right throughout the New England area in the north of New South Wales. For years, McLean have had a queue of people waiting to get into their facility for aged care. That is not the situation now and we know why that is not the situation. It is because government policy is to keep our elderly at home longer, which is a good policy.

But what we are seeing now is the impact on some of those smaller facilities, such as the Grace Munro Centre at Bundarra—a small community of some 400 or 500 people—which is to close in three or four weeks time. They will lose their aged-care facility. It is only 10 beds but, when the 10 beds were full, it was run by HN McLean Retirement Village at Inverell. They could not make enough money. Now it has gone down to seven beds because people are staying at home longer. McLean are losing so much money each year that now they have to close the facility. It is good to keep people at home, and I certainly support that policy, but what is going to happen in five or six years time when those people being kept at home need a higher level of care and have to go into an aged-care facility? Those facilities will not be open.

People will be shipped out, and that is a sad situation when they come from a small community. I will give an example of an elderly couple. The husband has to be taken to an aged care nursing home 50, 80 or 100 kilometres away from his wife, and so she has to travel that distance to visit him. That is sad in itself. The distance separates the two. That is why we need to keep aged care facilities open in all our communities, but we cannot keep them open when they are losing too much money. The McLean retirement village and the Grace Munro Centre at Bundarra cannot afford to lose too much money. If the McLean retirement village goes broke then we are in serious trouble.

I have found through some research that the last two aged care allocation rounds were undersubscribed. The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration handed down its report entitled Residential and Community Aged Care in Australia on 29 April 2009. The committee received 124 submissions and made 31 recommendations. The Minister for Ageing has still not responded to those recommendations. The Labor-dominated committee was very critical of the department and said:

Senior officers also displayed a less than forthcoming attitude to the committee and as a consequence the committee required a further submission from the department and held a second hearing with officers on 21 April.

There are signs that prove that the industry is in trouble. In 2007-08 the annual government report on aged care revealed that 98 providers left the business last financial year compared with 53 who entered it. So more people are leaving the industry than are joining it. Catholic Health Australia, the largest aged care provider in the country, advised Minister Elliott that it would not be constructing any more new high-care centres. In Queensland, the decision not to invest in high-care beds by the state’s largest private operator, TriCare, and the largest non-profit operator, Blue Care, which account for 8,005 of the state’s estimated 35,000 beds, will lead to a chronic shortage of high-care beds in that state.

Further, UnitingCare and Benetas in Victoria have confirmed that they will not expand to meet new demand next year as wafer-thin margins are forcing operators to defer new investment. A 34-bed aged care home on Tasmania’s north-west coast has shut down. The company is blaming the closure on financial losses. The Noosa Nursing Centre has reluctantly joined the chorus of aged care bodies across the state to rule out future constructions under the existing funding model. The Director of Nursing at Noosa Nursing Centre, Stephen Leggett, said that the existing funding model made it ‘impossible’ to justify adding more high-care places, despite anticipated future demand and that the cost of a high-care bed could spiral upwards to $200,000. He said, ‘We’re having problems with the funding of building ventures because banks have stipulated the return is not there.’ And there is more bad news: Whyalla Aged Care centre in South Australia has handed back 20 licences. I could say more but the point I make is this: it is up to the federal government to see that our aged care facilities are properly funded and properly staffed and that they can make a profit. What are we going to do in the future when more of the Australian population will need proper aged care in the twilight years of their life and we do not have the facilities? Providers simply do not receive enough funding to keep them viable.

Last Friday, I went to Northern New South Wales and spoke to the aged care providers there. They told me that aged care packages by ACAT have been approved for 71 people in the community. But there are no extra packages to provide elderly people with home services. In the New England area, 34 people have been assessed as requiring the extended aged care home package, the EACH package, but there are no packages available. This is a real concern. When I look back and see what our elderly have done for our country, the way they have worked, the wars they fought and how they have left this country for us—it is without question the best country in the world—I think we are letting them down.

I sincerely hope that the government addresses this issue. Certainly, the industry needs money. The government has decided to put a lot of money into state responsibilities such as building schools but although aged care is its responsibility—the federal government has a duty to look after it—aged care has not received any money from the stimulus packages. I urge the government to address this most important issue because surely our strongest and biggest obligation is to look after our elderly. I hope that the issue is addressed in the near future and that providers can make a profit and expand to provide the essential services that are so desperately in aged care facilities.