Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's aged-care system is in crisis. At the end of this week, the government is due to receive the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety report. It is long past time that this government listened to the experts in aged care. I am not just talking about the royal commissioners and all the many, many experts who gave evidence; I am talking about the dedicated hardworking people who staff the aged-care system, the dedicated hardworking aged-care workers who know the problems all too well and who know the solutions, the dedicated hardworking aged-care workers like Sheree, who I met on Friday.

Sheree came to Canberra last week to speak out on the government's latest attack on workers' rights: its industrial relations bill that will cut workers' pay and make part-time work even less secure. Sheree knows what that looks like because Australia's aged-care system is already built on casualised short-hour contracts. Sheree has worked in aged care for more than 20 years and she is contracted to work just 16 hours per fortnight. She consistently works above that but she cannot rely on the extra hours and that has devastating implications for her.

This kind of extreme job insecurity across the aged-care sector also has devastating implications for the elders in our care. For Sheree, it means she cannot convince a real estate agent to give her a lease, she cannot convince a bank to give her a home loan and sometimes she cannot make enough money just to meet her own basic needs. She handed me a statement on Friday which said: 'As a single middle-aged female with a lack of secure hours, I found myself living in temporary accommodation in a caravan. I have been unable to secure a long-term rental lease because I do not have guaranteed working hours. As a low-income worker, I am not alone here. Where I live, most people are low-income insecure workers. I have met seven other aged-care workers in the caravan park. We are already the working poor, and this bill is going to disadvantage us further.'

This is how we are staffing aged care in Australia today, in one of the richest countries in the world, in one of the most critical services that federal government is responsible for—the care of our elders. It is a disgrace, it is neglect, and our dedicated hardworking aged-care workforce should not have to make the kinds of decisions that Sheree has told us about. Workers who do this critical essential work should not have to choose between paying car registration or going to the dentist. Workers doing this critical essential work shouldn't have to choose which meal they're going to skip today. I should not have to say this in the Australian parliament. I should not have to tell the government that its aged-care system is so woefully inadequate that dedicated carers are living in caravan parks and skipping meals. I wish Sheree's case were an isolated example, but her experience is not the exception; it's the rule.

Late last year, I met with Ross, another proud and dedicated aged-care worker. Ross is passionate about aged care and wants to be able to dedicate himself to the role, to the residents and to the sector. But, like Sheree, he isn't given enough hours of work per week to make ends meet, so he's had to take a second job. He works over 50 hours a week, because his aged-care job is not enough; it's not enough on its own to make ends meet and support his three children. Ross told me about a 90-year-old woman in his care. He described her as an elegant and proud woman, a woman Ross has huge respect for. But this is a woman who, because of the aged-care crisis, has had to sit in her own mess because there are just not enough staff to give her the dignity and the comfort that she deserves. Again, this is happening in Australia, in one of the richest countries in the world, and it's happening in one of the most critical services that the federal government has responsibility for. It is nothing short of a disgrace.

The stories told by Sheree and Ross are borne out by research across the sector. Last year, the United Workers Union found that 90 per cent of aged-care workers did not have enough time to properly complete their work; and three-quarters of workers said there weren't enough staff to provide quality care. It is no surprise then that the same survey found that almost half, 44 per cent, of aged-care workers said they probably wouldn't stay working in the sector beyond the next five years. This is a big problem. It's a problem for the workers, it's a problem for our elders, and it's a problem for us as a country as a whole, because we need hundreds of thousands of people in the next few years to take up the critical work in this sector.

In order to retain the workforce that we have and attract a new workforce for the future, we need to do three things. First, we need to respect the aged-care workers who are speaking out today. We need to respect them not just with our thanks in a crisis but in their pay packets with a proper living wage. We need to ensure proper training that reflects the dedication aged-care workers already show to the elders in their care. Second, aged-care workers need to have good, secure jobs with enough hours to make ends meet. The organisation of aged care on these short-hour contracts is damaging. It's damaging to the workers and it's damaging to the elders in our care. We must place good, secure jobs at the heart of our aged-care system. Third, we need minimum staffing levels in aged care, and we need them urgently. When I talk to people in the community about what is happening in aged care, they just cannot believe that we don't have legislated, mandated minimum staffing levels in aged care. How can we operate an aged-care system without minimum staffing levels? How can we operate an aged-care system where the care of people's parents and grandparents is not supported by guaranteed minimum staffing levels in aged care in Australia? It is obscene.

These reforms are needed, they are urgent, and they need a big commitment—a commitment that this government has so far failed to give. This failure was made patently clear when the royal commission handed down its damning interim report, Neglect, last year. Neglect describes an aged-care system that is failing the vulnerable Australians it is supposed to care for and the families and the staff that work so hard to care for them. The interim report found that aged care not only fails to meet the needs of elderly people; it neglects them and is 'unkind and uncaring'. The commissioner described the aged-care industry as 'a sad and shocking system that diminishes Australia as a nation'—a system that needs to be changed.

People in aged care need to be treated as humans and not as a production line. And it is time we listened to experts like Sherree. Sherree wants better. She wants better for herself. She wants better for the other aged-care workers she knows. Most of all, she wants better for the elders in her care. Last week in Canberra she told us:

It is a great honour and privilege to share a person's final journey. Our older generation deserves better, to be treated with dignity and respect, but so do the people working in aged care. We need laws that properly value aged-care work and provide aged-care workers with secure jobs and fair pay.

Sherree and Ross, and so many other aged-care workers, are not just speaking up for themselves. They are speaking up for the security and the dignity of our aged-care residents. It is long past time the Morrison government listened to them.