Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is a common thread in this debate today, and it's great that aged care is being taken so seriously. Some of the more histrionic observations aside, there were generally excellent contributions from both sides, including the previous speaker. It's obvious, with a royal commission already having draft recommendations before us, that this is a government which is committed to action. I was working in aged care back in 1992, when I used to visit as a country GP and walked the wards of residential aged-care facilities feeling like I could spend an hour with every single patient if that were possible. There is the need to look after both those who work—those who provide the services—and the families, let's not ever forget this, who want the best for their loved ones. Ultimately, that's what home and residential aged care is all about.

My second observation is that we still have one of the really extraordinary and high-quality residential aged-care systems in the world. As you travel the world you realise that Australia's blend of home and residential aged care is quite unique. We've already heard from the health minister about all the significant investments, adding up to nearly half a billion dollars. The health minister talked about this and referred to the $16 million, which is about raising safety and quality standards initially. And there's a focus on 18,000 new workers—that in itself is an investment of about $90 million. And there's $280 million for standards and services within residential aged care. A significant chunk of that is about supporting metropolitan and outer metro with individual payments per resident of $11.45 and $7.60. Then, of course, there are those who are at risk, particularly in regional areas of financial stress, through this period.

We have two of the most eminent Australians writing the recommendations, and it's a chance for this very chamber to contribute ideas—to talk about how we address the issue of an aged-care nurse who isn't paid the same as a hospital nurse doing equivalent roles. Here's an opportunity for both sides of this chamber to work through the Fair Work Commission and to make sure that is addressed. The money paid has to bring in and retain the highest-quality nursing staff in the sector and they'll give great supervision to the rest.

But the patently obvious observations are that those who run nursing facilities sometimes attempt to cut corners on ratios and not have that emphasis on face-to-face bedside time. Anyone who has worked in medicine knows that the temptation to sit back at the nurses' quarters and do the paperwork for hours doesn't count towards face-to-face time. Every family member deserves the right to know whether their loved one is actually getting that face-to-face time. It's not just about the total time or ratios if those caregivers are nowhere near the patient. We can talk about the six-minute goal to respond to a buzzer, but how many of us have ever stood for six minutes knocking on a door and had no-one answer it? Six minutes in and of itself is unacceptable for response times.

When it comes to basic, fundamental nutrition and the provision of fresh food, if there's a provider out there spending six bucks per head per day on food and a guy down the road doing it for 10 or 12 then that needs to be recognised. In that sense, we need to be able to report honestly and frankly in the way that we now expect, with complete transparency of the performance of these providers. We're not here to run obfuscation and defence for providers who cut corners. There's always the risk of that happening and, in that sense, we need to act early and pre-emptively to help these providers before they get into trouble. It's not just about the spot checks without warning that might pop up two or three times a year. We don't want any more routine checks, we want unannounced visits, but we also want a constructive approach as regulators so that we address these concerns before they become major violations. Of course it's not as simple as a Tripadvisor website; we can't just put every complaint online, publically available, if it hasn't been substantiated—we need to protect good providers from malicious complaints, which are also a significant concern.

We don't need a nuclear physicist to sort out the aged-care system. We need a bit of ticker from every person who sits in here and who represents dozens of aged-care facilities. We can work together to come up with a better system. There's no doubt that there is the commitment, no matter which party is in power, to put money into the aged-care system. Already, in the time that we've been in government, the population of those aged over 70 has gone up by 28 per cent but the aged-care places in the system have increased by nine times that. The funding is up by 360 per cent. There's no doubt that, per head, this is a different world to where it was in 2012 when the other side were nickel and diming the ACFI system and we are no more innocent of that either. But now is the time for serious solutions and welcome help from both sides to see those reforms by the end, if not the middle, of this year.

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