Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on a matter of public interest which is the reality for the aged-care sector of failed expectations raised by this Rudd Labor government and of failed promises and dashed hopes. The ageing of our population is the biggest social issue facing Australia. Australia has a rapidly ageing population that is living longer with more complex health conditions and increasing and changing aged-care needs. At a time when there is increasing demand for services, providers are walking away from this sector due to the lack of viability in providing high-care beds and the increasing compliance demands of the Labor government.

The aged-care industry is in meltdown. Forty per cent of aged-care providers are operating in the red and 2,000 aged-care beds and 786 bed licences have been lost since 2007. The outlook is bleak for growing the capacity of aged care in Australia. Senior Australians are finding it increasingly difficult to access the services and the care they need when and where they want them. This continues to place pressure on the public hospital system. Catholic Health Australia have said to us that on any given night in this country there are 3,000 people in our hospitals who should be better cared for in our aged-care facilities.

There are many dedicated and committed individuals in this sector who are doing a fantastic job under difficult circumstances. I have seen firsthand the frustration of the sector with the approach of the Rudd Labor government to aged care and their failure to deliver on promises and make hard decisions. What did we see at the last federal election? We had Kevin Rudd on 8 August 2007 criticising the then government:

The other part is you’ve got the Federal Government there not providing enough aged care beds and people are becoming bed blockers in acute hospital beds. That’s part of the real problem nationwide.

Then we had Labor releasing their policy, which it entitled ‘New directions for older Australians: improving the transition between hospital and aged care’. That was the promise that they made to older Australians. What have they done? They are doing the complete opposite. Now they are shuffling off more and more money to the failed state and territory hospital systems to keep older Australians in hospitals for longer stays. It is a breach of the very promise that was on the front page of their aged-care policy. If we look at the recent budget, we see there was very little to secure the future of aged care for older Australians. The crisis in the aged-care sector has deepened as the Prime Minister continues to neglect and ignore the need for structural reform. Aged care is another casualty of Labor’s failure to make hard decisions while they underdeliver on promises and run up debt.

All the hard decisions that need to be made in the aged-care sector have been shunted off to yet another Productivity Commission review on aged care, which will not report until April 2011. There have been myriad reviews in this area. Indeed, one provider in Tasmania told me a few weeks ago that since 2007 his organisation has made submissions to 17 reviews by this government. We have had 17 reviews but absolutely no response whatsoever. All we have had is aged care—which the Prime Minister tells us is a major issue—shunted off to the Productivity Commission because it is all too hard. It is out of sight, out of mind until after the next federal election. There it was in black and white in the budget papers, ‘Future funding arrangements for the delivery of aged care will be reviewed in light of the findings of the Productivity Commission inquiry into aged care.’ Ken Henry had something to say about aged care. Mr Henry’s views on aged care have also been parked with the Productivity Commission.

In what really has to be one of the lowest acts of this government, Labor have raided money put aside in the aged-care budget for new nursing home beds to help fund this supposedly grand hospital plan—this big-taxing big-spending budget. They have redirected $276.4 million, which was destined for high-care residential aged-care places, to help state and territory governments with long stays in hospitals, to prop up failed state and territory hospital budgets. The frail and aged in this country who need a nursing home bed and cannot find a bed are now expected to pay for Labor’s massive budget deficit, which this year is coming in at over $40 billion, the second-biggest since World War II. We are borrowing at $700 million a week, or $100 million a day.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How much is that?

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is $100 million a day, Senator Mason. Labor has used the vulnerable frail and aged to buy off the states to get its way in this hospital plan. The Prime Minister said that he would stop the blame game. When older Australians cannot find a nursing home bed, they will certainly know who they have to blame. Labor’s reckless economic management and spending is hurting older Australians and their families, and the budget reveals the high price that all Australians will pay for Labor’s spending spree over the last 20 months.

Our priority will be to deliver high-quality, affordable and accessible aged care that meets the needs and preferences of older Australians. That is our priority. We understand that without reform of the sector senior Australians will not have their current and future aged-care needs met and the wellbeing of senior Australians will be at risk. There is a very real concern that our aged-care system is overregulated and underfunded and facing many challenges to delivering a good standard of care.

A strong indicator of this has been the perilous position seen in the lack of take-up of places in the aged-care approval rounds. Historically there was always strong competition for these places. But this has been dramatically turned around in the last two rounds, with undersubscription and indeed with no subscription. In Western Australia and Tasmania the government has failed to meet that quota and is filling the quota by allocating more places to community packages. The 2009-10 ACAR round was announced late, with the allocation of places not expected until the second half of this year.

In recent weeks we have seen very clearly that Prime Minister Rudd does not deliver on his promises and is not prepared to make the hard decisions. There is climate change—that greatest moral challenge of our time—and there is the super tax on the mining sector which is going to hurt all Australians. One only has to look at the difficult decisions that have to be made to see that they are all shunted off. I mentioned the referral to the Productivity Commission in the aged-care area. But there is also the current aged-care planning ratios and the review. There was 2 million set aside in the 2008-09 budget but, according to the department’s annual report, this has been deferred yet again—and again this has been another difficult decision shunted off to the Productivity Commission.

Let us look at some of Labor’s promises in this area. The Bringing Nurses Back into the Workforce program was abolished. They failed to deliver on the promised 1,000 aged-care nurses. Only 139 nurses were delivered by February 2010. Now the sector is expected to trust the new nurse recruitment initiative to deliver. But, this time, Labor have not told us how many they are anticipating delivering—given the bad record that they have thus far.

Another example of underdelivery is hidden in the portfolio budget papers: only 8,200 of the 13,100 training places for aged-care workers were delivered in 2008-09. The other great failure has been the zero interest loans. The paperwork for these is so complex, and providers have said to me that it is really not worth it because, with the viability of the sector so much in question, if the sector cannot repay its loans then there is no point in taking out a loan even at zero interest level. Notwithstanding this bad uptake, here we have in the budget another $46 million in zero interest loans. Only $46 million has been taken up and now we have $300 million promised. But we have not actually seen any projects—indeed I have only met one person who has even applied for these zero interest loans. Transition care is another big priority for this government. We only have 698 transition places—of the promised 2,000. As at 3 February this year we only had 228.

Against all this we have the background of the Prime Minister’s grand hospital plan. As Premier Brumby said, aged care was used as the bargaining chip in this whole process. I have canvassed issues in relation to the Prime Minister’s grand hospital plan, and the COAG programs have been the subject of a hearing by the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration over the last couple of weeks. What has this shown? It has shown that the new system is not much more than an entrenchment of the current system. As Premier Brumby and his health minister boasted in the newspapers on 22 April, the states got everything that they wanted, and the Prime Minister’s grand plans, which he announced at the National Press Club on 3 March 2010, all fell by the wayside. The mantra of ‘federally funded and run locally’ has now been shown up for the sham that it really is.

The advertising campaign that this government is running is deceptive and misleading; it does not tell the Australian public the reality of the hospital plan. What has emerged from the committee hearings is that this government is deceiving the Australian public about the reality. The reality is that the states are still in control. The Local Hospital Networks will not be run by local doctors. The doctors who will be in the Local Hospital Networks will be appointed by the states. The agreement specifically says that the clinical expertise in those Local Hospital Networks wherever practical—it starts from that fundamental point—will come from outside the Local Hospital Networks. That is the fraud that this government is perpetrating on the Australian public. Last night on Lateline we heard Minister Albanese trumpeting:

... we deserve to be re-elected because we have a constant reform program ... We are a government that is determined to reform, because the job of reform is never done.

If Mr Rudd’s grand plan for the hospitals is his idea of reform, can I tell you that this government is definitely going backwards. This is not reform; this is deception of the Australian public. It is all absolute drivel.

Let me conclude my comments. This industry is fed up. In Western Australia last week one provider said to me that the situation was so bad that at a forum he called for the industry to stop accepting admissions from hospitals. It is not surprising that the aged-care sector are up in arms. They have started a campaign for the care of older Australians. A coalition of the major groups in the aged-care sector are very clear that they are going to run a major campaign before the next federal election. But of course what does one expect? The minister keeps talking about more money in aged care. Of course; people are getting older and they are needing more and more services. As the Australian Financial Review reported, it is little wonder that the aged-care sector is up in arms. It says:

In the junior ministry a conspicuous failure has been Justine Elliott, who is simply not up to the job in the important aged care portfolio. (Time expired)