Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of this bill, however, is to amend the Aged Care Act 1997 to transfer responsibility for aged-care complaints from the secretary of the Department of Social Services to the Aged Care Commissioner. This is intended to occur from 1 January 2016. The bill also amends the act and the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency Act 2013 to change the name of the Aged Care Commissioner to the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner.

When I visit any one of the very many wonderful residential care centres in my electorate, be it Raymond Terrace Gardens, the Bill King Aged Care Facility or Regis The Gardens—both of the latter two are out on the Tomaree Peninsula—or Glaica House in Tuncurry to name but a few, I am always very thankful to see what I see, because these are people's homes. What I see when I visit there are happy residents, and what I see there are very, very dedicated staff—and, of course, that is as it should be. We all want our twilight years to be spent as happily and as comfortably as they can, and we want to live longer in our homes.

I was pleased to be able to welcome the Assistant Minister for Social Services, Senator the Hon. Mitch Fifield to my electorate in February this year. That is when I hosted two aged-care forums to engage with stakeholders who are involved in the aged-care industry. I took Minister Fifield to the Lara Aged Care facility at Dungog to host an event, an aged-care forum, and a second forum was held with aged-care providers and stakeholders in my electorate office at Raymond Terrace.

One of the roles of government is to care for its people. To this end, the government subsidises aged-care services for older people who are no longer able to live independently or in their own homes. The Aged Care Act 1997 provides regulatory funding and a quality framework for services, including residential aged care, home care packages and flexible care programs. In 2013-14 the Australian government spent some $9.8 billion on residential care subsidies and supplements and $1.3 billion on home care packages. In this period, around 232,000 people received permanent residential care, around 48,000 received residential respite care and around 83,000 people received home care packages.

The Paterson electorate was allocated $2.131 million to deliver a recommended 29 new residential aged care places at the Tea Gardens Manor, and 20 home-care places in Forster under the latest federal government's Aged Care Approvals Round, ACAR. This is part of a national package of more than 17,500 new aged-care places that will be delivered, worth an estimated $833 million. In December last year I was pleased to announce that the coalition had made a $2 million injection into my electorate, providing aged care and home care for the elderly.

This is a government that believes older Australians want and, indeed, deserve to have the support and the care needed to live active and healthy lives, and continue to be able to choose the aged care services that they need. The objectives of the act include promoting a high quality of care and accommodation and protecting the health and wellbeing of those people receiving aged care. It is important that our aged-care providers are strenuously regulated but also that they are engaged in dialogue with the government. As our older people are amongst the most vulnerable in our community there needs to be a high standard of accreditation for these aged-care facilities. Relatives and friends of residents of aged-care homes need an avenue to air their grievances. The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency accredits and performs quality reviews of aged-care services while the Department of Social Services is responsible for aged-care regulatory policy compliance enforcement as well as funding. Currently, DSS also operates the Aged Care Complaints Scheme.

We are a government that cares for our ageing population. As we face an ever-ageing population the challenge is upon us to make sure that we have the best possible system in place to care for our elderly with absolute dignity. The late American broadcaster Andy Rooney summed this up when he said:

It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.

Families need—and indeed, expect—an avenue to air their grievances about aged-care facilities that their loved ones are living in if a regrettable experience occurs. The Aged Care Complaints Scheme responds to complaints about the Australian government's subsidised aged-care services, including residential care, home-care packages, the Commonwealth Home and Community Care Program and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program. The scheme received 3,903 complaints in 2013-14. The majority of these—89 per cent—related to residential aged care. The issues most frequently complained about were health and personal care, consultation and communication, the physical environment and personal and medication management.

If a complainant or a service provider is not satisfied with a decision or process of the scheme they can ask the Aged Care Commissioner to review that decision or process. After a complaint has been examined a commissioner may direct or make recommendations to the scheme or to the AACQA. The commissioner can also examine the processes of the scheme or the AACQA without receiving a complaint. In 2013-14 the commissioner had 10 staff and a budget of $1.4 million, and received 96 complaints. Most complaints—56 per cent—were about scheme decisions, and 41 per cent were about scheme processes. People who have complaints about the commissioner's administrative actions can complain to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Two such complaints were made in 2013-14.

This bill transfers the complaints powers of the secretary of the DSS to the Aged Care Commissioner. This separation of complaints management from the funder and the regulatory body really does make sense and it is actually best practice. In making these changes the government recognises the recommendations of the 2009 review of the former Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme, by Associate Professor Merrilyn Walton, and the Productivity Commission's 2000 report, Caring for older Australians. At the request of the Australian government, in June 2011 the Productivity Commission released a report recommending significant changes to the operation and delivery of aged care in Australia. One recommendation, which was broadly similar to the recommendation in the Walton review, was to establish an independent regulatory agency, including a commissioner for complaints and reviews to handle consumer and aged-care-provider complaints about aged-care services. The government did not adopt this recommendation in its 2012 response to the Productivity Commission report, but this bill now rectifies that situation. I commend this bill to the House.

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