House debates

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Bills

Aged Care Amendment (Independent Complaints Arrangements) Bill 2015; Second Reading

12:29 pm

Photo of Scott MorrisonScott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill introduces a measure announced in the 2015 budget, which increases the independence of aged-care complaints handling from 1 January 2016.

This is achieved through the transfer of aged-care complaints handling powers, from the Secretary of the Department of Social Services to the Aged Care Commissioner, to be renamed the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner.

In making these changes the government has recognised the recommendations of the 2009 review of the former Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme by Associate Professor Merrilyn Walton and the Productivity Commission's 2011 report Caring for Older Australians.

The commissioner is an independent statutory office holder who currently examines complaints about the decisions and processes of the Aged Care Complaints Scheme and the processes of the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency.

When the commissioner takes responsibility for the complaints arrangements, review of decisions will be integrated within those arrangements. Concerns regarding the processes of the commissioner and the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency can be raised with the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

Existing legislated complaints management functions consistent with the Complaints Principles 2014 will be maintained and will continue to cover Australian government residential and home based aged care.

Aged care regulatory policy, compliance and enforcement will remain the responsibility of the Department of Social Services.

The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency will remain responsible for the accreditation and quality review of aged-care services.

The change will result in a separation of complaints management from the funder and regulator, which reflects best practice in complaints handling.

12:31 pm

Photo of Shayne NeumannShayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

Labor supports this particular legislation. We want better, fairer, more sustainable and nationally consistent aged care in this country. We want to make sure that aged care is affordable. We want to make sure that people have choice. We want to put consumers in control of their lives with respect to aged care. We want to encourage businesses to invest and to grow. We want diverse, rewarding career options for those people who work in this sector. That is why, when we were in power, we put forward a 10-year strategy known as Living Longer Living Better. We made sure that we had a strategy to roll forward into the future.

I am pleased the current government has, in large part, supported that, but we are concerned as to where the savings will come from in relation to this particular measure that is before the chamber. The bill and the explanatory memorandum talk about $2.8 million of savings over four years. We are assured by the government that the 130 full-time equivalent DSS staff will see no loss of jobs and that there will be no reduction in staffing in that particular area. As the minister said, this comes from a recommendation of Professor Merrilyn Walton in her review into the aged-care sector. She is a professor of medical education at the University of Sydney. As a result of that review, there was a call for a more independent statutory authority. Professor Walton's review found that a separate body from the department that primarily funded and regulated aged care was necessary to remove concerns about the impartiality of decisions in circumstances where aged-care complaints were made to the department secretary.

The situation is that complaints in relation to consumers and providers will not really vary. The government says these are efficiencies. We are concerned about that aspect. It is unclear how appeals and reviews will be undertaken, by whom and to what place. We think it is imperative that there be independence in relation to the commissioner, and we have some concern about the co-location of staff in DSS offices. I note that the transition is due to take place on 1 January next year.

In circumstances where the federal government is both the major funder—providing 76 per cent of residential aged-care costs—and the regulator of aged care, it is important that there be integrity in the system. The Aged Care Complaints Scheme provides some of that protection. We support the legislation, and so do Catholic Health Australia. They note that it has long been recognised that good governance in public administration requires the separation of the regulatory arms of government from policy and funding arms.

There is concern, as I have said. The seniors lobby, the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association of NSW, queried whether the commissioner would have sufficient staff to handle the 4,000 complaints which are received every year. So we call on the government to make sure there is adequate staffing in the department for the commissioner to do this job.

It is important that the government handles not just the complaints mechanism but also the access to the aged-care system that is so crucial to the integrity of the aged-care system. I note there has been much criticism at the front end of the aged-care sector. In fact, the government has admitted its new online aged-care referral system—myagedcare.gov—has had problems and has been criticised by doctors and aged-care providers. So I call on the government in this speech to look at that aspect of the aged-care sector. The feedback I have received after my speech at the national conference of ACSA in Perth recently and afterwards as I have done roundtables around the country, be it in Brisbane, Bendigo or anywhere, in relation to the aged-care sector shows concern not just about the complaints mechanism but also about access to aged care for those people who, as they get older, need home care, those people who need the Commonwealth Home Support Program provided to them and also those people—and the average age is about 85 years—who need residential aged care.

The government really needs to have a look at that aspect. It is not just about these reforms that are currently before the chamber which are receiving bipartisan support from the opposition; the government needs to have a look at a whole range of areas where it has taken its eyes off the ball. The government has adopted the recommendations here, and we commend the government for that. But I do not think slashing $20 million from innovative care projects, slashing $40 million from Aged Care Workforce Fund, the cuts abandoning the Younger Onset Dementia Key Worker Program from 2016 or discarding the world's first dementia risk reduction program, Your Brain Matters, is really in the best interests of aged care in this country.

The government are doing a few good things, and we have offered them support in relation to the deregulatory scheme. In fact, we offered them support when they provided some legislation in relation to building certification as part of their red tape repeal day. But our job as the opposition is to hold them to account, and so I do call on the assistant minister to produce the stocktake of government funded dementia programs. They have now got a conversation starter, provided by KPMG.

We still have not seen the stocktake of workforce programs that they need to actually provide the necessary funding for a proper workforce in the sector. We have got about 300,000 people working in the aged-care sector, but in the next five to 10 years we will need about 56,000 more. While the government finally got rid of the workforce supplement in December 3013, there has been no audit or stocktake from the government, which they promised they would provide in February 2014 when the minister announced that he would undertake that. Further, the ministerial dementia forums, which are supposed to be held annually, have not been held.

This is a government which is doing a good thing with this legislation today, but we are still waiting to hear from a government which really needs to focus more on ageing. We are talking about a portfolio that is responsible for about $15 billion of federal government money—this is taxpayers' money. We want to make sure that the sector has improved wages, good career development and increases in the number of job seekers knocking on aged-care providers' doors to get into the sector, and that has not happened, and we have seen no improvement in the profitability of the sector.

It is important that the government take notice of what the sector is having to say. So while the legislation here deals with the complaints mechanism, they are not actually handling properly the implementation of Labor's Living Longer Living Better reforms, and the My Aged Care website and the hotline are difficult to navigate, complex and very flawed, and I ask the government to address this. In circumstances where we have had a number of aged-care providers at forums I have been at around the country, they have said to me they have got almost no referrals through the My Aged Care website. Indeed, if they had not had people on their waiting lists they would not have had anything happen in the last few months. That is simply not good enough.

The government needs to address those issues and make sure that we have got the necessary aged-care assessments and the home care packages and make sure that the kind of grassroots support which people need is actually delivered. At the moment people are bypassing the sector as best they can. That is the feedback I have been getting. I call on the government to work in close collaboration with the aged-care sector to improve, listen to consumers, listen to providers, resolve these issues and improve the aged-care sector, then we will not be in that position where we have to keep criticising the government and making sure that we do speeches like this in parliament and do press conferences and press releases which criticise the government for taking their eye off the ball in this sector. I commend them for this legislation. We offer our support. But they really need to improve the situation with respect to their provision of aged care in this country.

12:40 pm

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

I rise today to speak in favour of the Aged Care Amendment (Independent Complaints Arrangements) Bill 2015. This bill is of particular concern to my electorate of Paterson because Paterson is the electorate that is ranked fourth in Australia with the highest number of residents of more than 70 years of age. My electorate has some 18,642 people over the age of 70, which is around 15.6 per cent of the population of my electorate. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker—and I am sure it is something that you acutely aware of—that the closer we get to 70 the less it actually seems like old age.

Photo of Russell BroadbentRussell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you very much!

Photo of Bob BaldwinBob 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.

12:50 pm

Photo of Kelly O'DwyerKelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

The Aged Care Amendment (Independent Complaints Arrangements) Bill 2015 introduces a measure announced in the 2015 budget, which increases the independence of aged-care complaints handling from 1 January 2016. This is achieved through the transfer of aged-care complaints-handling powers from the secretary of the Department of Social Services to the Aged Care Commissioner, to be renamed the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner. In making these changes, the government has recognised 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.

The commissioner is an independent statutory office holder who currently examines complaints about the decisions and processes of the Aged Care Complaints Scheme and the processes of the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency. When the commissioner takes responsibility for the complaints arrangements, review of decisions will be integrated within those arrangements. Concerns regarding the processes of the commissioner and the Aged Care Quality Agency can be raised with the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Existing legislative complaints management functions consistent with the Complaints Principles 2014 will be maintained and will continue to cover Australian government residential and home based aged care. Aged care regulatory policy, compliance and enforcement will remain the responsibility of the Department of Social Services. The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency will remain responsible for the accreditation and quality review of aged-care services. The change will result in the separation of complaints management from the funder and regulator, which reflects the best practice in complaints handling. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.