Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Make no mistake, Labor supports the call—a somewhat belated call, I might add—for a royal commission into aged care by the government after five long years of falling asleep at the wheel. There has been ample opportunity for the government to respond to more than a dozen reports and reviews that sit on the minister's desk. Time and time again members on this side of the House have raised absolutely critical aged-care issues in this parliament. I know this because I've travelled with my colleague Dr Mike Freelander, the member for Macarthur, to many parts of our country. I can see here the member for Dobell from the Central Coast, who, like the member for Macquarie next her, has raised consistent issues around access to aged care and services in her region. We've held round tables in Katoomba and the seat of Dobell alike. Indeed, the member for Herbert, sitting behind me, Cathy O'Toole, and I have been to Townsville. Each and every time, what Australian men and women have to say to us is the same: that their capacity to navigate their way around this government's My Aged Care website is extremely limited. If they are without family or friends to support them, they haven't got a hope in hell of figuring out how to access half these services.

What else did they raise with us in these round tables? Well, they said that despite applying and being found eligible for in-home care packages, the packages are not there to access. Indeed, I raised in this parliament the case of a constituent in my own electorate of Newcastle whose mother had made application, had been found eligible for an in-home package and received a letter to say, 'Congratulations: you're successful in your level 3 package'—eight months after she was deceased. That was 12 months after she first applied. We heard similar stories from the people of Townsville. These are not one-off stories. These are stories that you will hear if you bother to ask the questions of Australian men and women. You just have to ask and be prepared to listen. As distressing, as sickening as those stories on Four Corners last night were, they were not surprising. None of us on this side of the House thought they were surprising. We were disgusted, yes. They were sickening, yes. And we were feeling every moment of the way for those families, for the staff working there. But it was not surprising. You would have to be deaf and blind to not hear the Australian people crying out for support in aged care, for the crisis that is in aged care in Australia.

The Minister got it terribly wrong when he accused Labor of scaremongering on this a few weeks ago. He got it very, very wrong. It was a gross overreach on the government's part. It's good that they have belatedly come to the realisation that nothing short of a royal commission is deserved in order to get to the bottom of the gross inequities that exist in aged care, the appalling rates of pay for the women—and it is predominantly women working in these caring roles in these facilities—and the fact that 108,000 older Australians, and it's growing, are on a waitlist to access in-home care packages but haven't got a hope in hell in accessing those. The minister was right earlier in his speech when he said that Australians are dying waiting for this in-home package. We've all got examples that we can bring to the table of that. Australians are dying.

Well, do you know what, Minister, and this government? You don't have to wait for a royal commission to do something about this. Release those in-home packages now. Stop stumping up your tax breaks to the big end of town and put that money where it's needed and where it deserves to be spent. Older Australians do not have to wait for you to have a royal commission so you can act. You need to drive down those waitlists and you need to do it now.

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