Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Franklin for her interest in this area. The current challenges we face in home care are yet another landmine left for Australians by the disastrous years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments. Under Labor, it was not possible for governments to ascertain the real demand for home care packages. The information was only available at aged-care provider level. I am aware of many families who, in the past, would put their names down with up to 15 providers, depending on where they lived. Then they would wait for a phone call, and they would ring providers frequently to ask if a vacancy had occurred. When I made the comment that there was no line of sight—I want to come back to the historical element of Living Longer Living Better. If you don't collect the data, you don't know the extent of the number of people waiting for placements and packages. When I made a national list, one of the challenges I faced was initially thinking it was 10,000. As we worked through the process of ACAT assessments—the allocation of packages—it became a reality that the list was going to grow. To address that problem, I gained approval to allocate an additional 6,000 home care packages in MYEFO to help alleviate that list.

This is interesting. If I follow the logic of what the member for Franklin said—in the forward to 2011–12 Report on the Operation of the Aged Care Act 1997, the former Minister for Aged Care, the honourable Mark Butler, the member for Port Adelaide, said:

The Government continues to emphasise the importance of providing consumers with the flexibility to choose the care they want. This year—

in 2013—

an additional 500 Consumer Directed Care (CDC) packages were allocated to Approved Providers. From 1 July 2012, these packages were converted to mainstream home care packages with conditions of allocation to ensure that care recipients continue to receive care and services…

… … …

This provided 187,941 residential care places, 60,949 community care places…

When you look at the table of allocated packages—in 2008, it was 39,000. Labor then increased it in 2009, which took the total to 42,694, and then, in 2012, it was 46,588. During his speech, the minister made the comment that he would be allocating additional places.

I want to go back to a couple of things. The Living Longer Living Better aged-care reform packages that the Prime Minister and I announced in April last year provides a 10-year plan for building new aged-care system—a system for the 21st century. But the work that was required to be done to identify the cohorts coming through by age didn't appear, and the underscoring of the number of places resulted in a lesser level being allocated by that government. It's fine to have choice, but one of the challenges is that governments have to look at the forward projections when they implement reforms, and in this instance that didn't happen.

In February 2017, the Turnbull government introduced the landmark increasing choice reforms. The new system means that packages are released directly to consumers rather than providers. Consumers who have the most urgent needs or who have been waiting the longest receive their packages first. The new system allows us to better understand the extent of demand for home care packages nationally for the first time. Older Australians are now allocated a position on the national queue depending on their needs, and packages will be periodically released to customers based on ratios set by Labor in the Living Longer Living Better reforms. However, with the reforms introduced by this government, the system is transparent, and it has exposed the enormous inadequacy of the ratios set by Labor.

When introducing the reforms the member for Port Adelaide indicated:

…the total allocation of home care places rising from around 60,000 to almost 100,000 over the next five years.

During the time of the Turnbull government, we've increased the number of aged-cared places from 83,800 to 97,516. That's an increase of 37,516 aged-care places. We are responding to the needs of Australians, and we will consider all the categories where I am informed, by members, of those requiring urgent support. What we do is bring together the resources under the various packages and provide them with assistance through the Commonwealth Home Support Program. I've always said that we need to ensure that people who are offered a level 2 package take that package and use it as the basis for the treatment they require that is also supported by the Commonwealth Home Support Program and other measures that are important.

We are working on the issues that have been identified within the work that we are doing. The Tune legislation review and the Carnell-Paterson report go to the crux of building on the reforms that were set in place, but drilling down into the data is also required. In looking at these figures, I asked the department to do an analysis of the ACAT assessing patterns, because there were jurisdictions where the waiting period for an ACAT assessment was way beyond the 17 days that you would expect, as the national average. In Queensland, it was nine months. We have now written to every health minister, and those matters have been addressed. The only state where we are still lagging with respect to the ACAT assessments is the state of Victoria. The data does show there is a higher demand for level 3 and level 4 packages, and the government recognises that more needs to be done to support older Australians with high-care needs to continue living at home, and that's why we released the additional 6,000 packages.

But that's not all we're doing. In the 2017 budget the Turnbull government provided a record $18.6 billion for aged-care investment for 2017-18. The first part is a commitment that is planned for the next five years. In addition to this, in the 2017 budget, the Turnbull government provided an investment of $5.5 billion to extend the Commonwealth Home Support Program for a further two years until June 2020. This is also a mechanism that provides support to those who are waiting. It provides a sense of being assisted. I am aware that there are people who are waiting, and we work very closely with those who raise the issues—with families and with the department—in looking for solutions while people wait to receive their level 4 package.

The best ally that older Australians have in this place is the government. The bipartisan commitment to ageing Australians remains the foundation of the way in which we in this place provide the opportunities to older Australians. But, equally, I am seeking the opportunity to increase further levels of care to senior Australians living at home. I certainly do acknowledge that we have a future in which we will see numbers increase, but we are working to make sure that we address those in the way that Living Longer Living Better intended. The work that we will continue to do will identify the extent of people waiting, the number who receive the packages and those who need additional support whilst packages become available.

We release 2,500 packages every week as part of the process of providing better access to ageing Australians to ensure that they can live at home longer, enjoy quality of life and have the other supports from family. Certainly, carers are a strong consideration in the work that my department and I do under the Turnbull government to provide better outcomes for senior Australians.

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