Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Anyone at any time can become a carer. It's never going to be good timing. It's definitely not something that will ever be convenient. And, yet, there are 2.7 million unpaid family and friend carers out there. So I want to use this opportunity as we recognise National Carers Week to say to them: thank you for the sacrifices you make to enrich someone's life, thank you for the time you give and thank you for the outstanding contribution you're making day in, day out to our society.

Each and every week in this country unpaid carers spend an incredible 36 million hours caring for friends and family members who have a disability, mental illness, chronic condition or terminal illness, or who are frail and aged. When you choose to become a carer, it has a number of consequences, many of them financial. Not only do people lose an income; they also miss out on superannuation. So sometimes the lost-earnings impact hits carers, many of them women, further down the track. I saw my own mother and her sisters care for my grandmother as dementia claimed her independence. I've seen Fran, an inspiring mum who gives and gets joy from caring for her son, Josh, but—wow!—she works hard. I've seen husbands like Norm nurse their wives as age takes its toll so that home can still be home. Carers I speak to rarely complain about the challenges they face. Even when they have a battle with bureaucracy that would have me tearing my hair out, I see people who are enormously accepting of the path they have taken.

One group that I see less often are the young people who become carers when a grandparent, parent or sibling becomes sick. I would like to take a moment to focus on them. There are probably more of them around than you would think. The average age of carers is 55. Being not far off that, I'd argue that 55 should qualify as young! But there are thousands who are really young. There are 272,000 carers under the age of 25. Carers young and older find many positive experiences in their caring roles, but research also shows that there can be negative effects on the health, wellbeing and education of young carers if they're not adequately supported. There can be barriers to socialising because they can't leave the person they care for or they may experience stress and anxiety from the responsibilities they're carrying at a really young age. There can be difficulty fully engaging in education, because of the time and energy caring takes. Many find it difficult to find part-time work that is flexible and able to accommodate them. We know they do it because they love and respect the person who is unwell or has a disability, but they definitely need recognition and support for their role.

Balancing work with caring responsibilities isn't a challenge that only young people face, with one in eight Australian employees being in a caring role this year. According to Carers Australia, carers tend to be economically disadvantaged, have lower general wellbeing than others, are more likely to experience poor health, have an above average rating on the depression scale and are more likely to experience chronic pain or injury associated with caring. So, basically, carers just don't have the time they need to care for themselves.

The rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been another major challenge for carers of NDIS recipients as they try to navigate the scheme. Rightly, the NDIS is, for the first time, focusing on the individual, but many of those individuals have volunteer carers. In the wake of the Productivity Commission's report on the NDIS, the head of the NDIS has admitted that there are flaws and announced new reforms. One of those flaws is that access to respite for unpaid carers is inadequate. I've had a mother who cares for her daughter tell me that the only way she was going to get the same level of respite that she had prior to the NDIS was by signing a declaration which said that, if she didn't get it, she would not be able to care at all for her daughter. This is a horrible situation for parents and partners to be put in. That there is an official document in which to make that sort of declaration is heartbreaking, demeaning and completely unnecessary. Access to proper respite care is vital for carers and for the sustainability of the NDIS. As so much of the support relies on unpaid carers, they deserve our heartfelt thanks.

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