Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the private member's motion on the reform agenda for older Australians, moved by the member for Shortland. The member for Shortland is a strong advocate of all aged-care issues, so it is a great pleasure to be speaking on her motion this evening. The quality of life for elderly Australians is particularly important and it is more so in my electorate, which is one of the most multicultural and diverse electorates in Australia and has indeed one of the largest ageing communities. Ageing is an integral part of the life cycle where nothing is quite as complicated because of cultural and linguistic sensitivities as caring for elderly people and their very complex needs. Increasing the age pension, reforming the aged-care system and helping older Australians stay at work longer are all part and parcel of addressing those needs and they are being implemented by the Gillard Labor government.

Caring for the aged is an issue that affects all communities and all sectors. I find this is continuously reiterated to me through my personal work with my constituents and also in my dealings with community groups, both in my electorate and elsewhere, particularly given the ageing of Australia's post-Second World War migration, otherwise known as the ageing of Arthur Calwell's new Australians. Of the ageing new Australians—they once were new Australians—the Greek and Italian communities have the largest number of ageing people, and they are followed by the Chinese, Indians, Turks and many others who came to Australia during that period.

I have spoken many times to those communities and almost all of them advocate—and these are alarm bells that we need to heed—that what is now paramount is the proper care of the elderly and in particular the care of the elderly from migrant communities, because the quality of that care is a hallmark of any civilised society. The ageing of migrant communities brings special challenges that we are all very familiar with. Just as newly arrived migrants need special services to assist their settlement into this country in the first five years of their arrival, so too, at the other end of the spectrum, elderly migrants require culturally and linguistically sensitive services to cater for their needs as they age. This is the case no matter how long they have lived here. Many of them have been here for many decades. The date 29 August marks 50 years since my father and his young family, including me, first disembarked at Station Pier at Port Melbourne. It is for those reasons that I am very pleased to say that the government has made important headway on reforming the aged-care system when it comes to caring for our ageing people and in particular our ageing migrant population.

In December last year I welcomed the release of the National Ageing and Aged Care Strategy for People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds. The strategy will help inform the delivery of Living Longer Living Better, which is part of the government's $3.7 billion aged-care reform package. As we all know, ageing brings with it a returning emphasis and reliance on the mother tongue. Older people, no matter how fluently they have acquired a second language—in this case, English—or subsequent language during their lifetime, tend to feel most comfortable in their original language as they grow older. Taking into account that about 20 per cent of people aged 65 years and over were born outside Australia and by 2021 that number will rise to 30 per cent, it is vital that we are sensitive to this fact when planning and providing services to older Australians of non-English-speaking background.

The migrant elderly—many of them in my electorate—often have very different cultural, linguistic and spiritual needs, and that can affect the type of care and services they require and are provided for. I congratulate the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, because he has recognised that this community sector has very important needs and unique challenges that are faced by the elderly, their families and their aged-care providers. He has responded to those needs through the National Ageing and Aged Care Strategy for People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds. That is the basis upon which the government will assist in helping this sector develop highly specialised needs. (Time expired)

See this speech in context