Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a statistic and a fact that should be damning to all of us. It is this: when we go, on a weekend, to a Bunnings and are greeted by a worker—often a young male or female, often a student—that worker is getting paid 20 to 30 per cent more than the people working in aged care in this country who are looking after the people who are dearest and nearest to us. The average aged-care worker in Australia is currently being paid $21 to look after the people who are most important and most significant to all of us.

The reality is this: we have an ageing population, and we have an ageing community. The miracle of modern health care means that people will be living for longer and longer. We should be celebrating that as a society. But the facts, when it comes to aged care and the reality of aged care, are damning, shocking and horrific.

I want to pay a small tribute to Senator Helen Polley, who has been advocating this case and using the Senate committee process to highlight this. I note that there have been many people from different political parties—it's not just a Labor issue—who have highlighted the real cause for concern about aged care in this country.

I want to acknowledge the campaign being run by the Health Services Union of New South Wales and across the country which is called Our Turn To Care, which is about highlighting the horrible levels of pay, the terrible conditions and the low ratio numbers that exist in some of these aged-care facilities. Governments are about priorities. Budgets are about priorities. When you can find $50 billion for business tax cuts, when you can find $122 million or $127 million for a marriage survey that nobody wants, surely you can find the money to pay some of Australia's most maligned, hardest working and underrecognised people, and those are the people involved in Australia's aged-care industry.

I want to acknowledge the work that's being run by Gerard Hayes, the secretary of that union, but also by the rank and file, who have realised that it's not good enough to simply say an outcome. You have to go out there and run the campaign on the ground to win the campaign with the people and to build that case through community activism and through grassroots.

These facts are astounding. The average aged-care worker in this country is likely to be female—that's 88 per cent of them—is likely to be over 49 years old, and is likely to be in a major city, where two-thirds of them are found. The fact that there are over 235,000 people working in residential care and 130,000 people working in home care support shows just how many people are affected by this.

As a society and in this Senate, we have to make decisions. We have to make choices. We have to decide whether or not we're going to be providing adequate care to our families, to the people who matter most to us. I just want to take a small moment to congratulate the Health Services Union for the campaign that they're running.