Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to give an update to my communities on the Aged Care Amendment (Implementing Care Reform) Bill 2022. When I travel across my electorate, from Bombala to Yass, I'm listening to locals on the importance of aged-care reform and how much it's needed across regional Australia in particular. This bill implements three of our government's urgent election commitments that put security, dignity, quality and humanity back into aged care. These include supporting aged-care providers to get 24/7 registered nurses, capping home-care charges and greater transparency and accountability from aged-care providers and services.

My mum worked in aged care for the last 15 years of her career, and my nan spent her last years in an aged-care facility during the initial COVID outbreaks. I've heard firsthand from my mum about the importance of putting residents front and centre in any care plan. Mum talked about this part of her working life as being a privilege. For Mum, caring for, connecting with and protecting those who contributed to our communities was far more than just a job. But too many of her work colleagues just weren't making enough money and were required to work over multiple facilities.

This government made a submission to the Fair Work Commission in support of increased wages for aged-care workers and is committing to fund the outcome of the case. This government recognises that older Australians living in rural and remote areas deserve the same quality of care as those living in metropolitan Australia. This bill will introduce a new responsibility for approved providers of residential care and of specified kinds of flexible care to ensure they have a registered nurse on site and on duty at each residential facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This can only lead to better health outcomes for some of our country's most vulnerable residents. Importantly, rural and remote providers will be required to meet that particular standard of care. There are going to be exemptions because we need to demonstrate that there are appropriate arrangements in place to ensure the quality of care for and safety of residents. But, noting that there are particular challenges in the workforce at this point in time, we don't want our rural and remote providers to miss out.

More than 210,000 older Australians are currently receiving home-care packages, many in regional Australia. I've heard in Braidwood, in Tumut and in Eden the difficulty of accessing home care because administration costs have depleted the approved care package to the point where services cannot be provided. The bill reflects the government's commitment to capping the amount that can be charged for administration and management to people receiving home-care packages, and to removing exit amounts altogether. This measure will provide pricing transparency and enable the government to cap these charges. It also requires information from residential aged-care services and provider expenditure to be publicly available because we know clear information helps people make clear decisions. I support the transparency of information because it will help to level the playing field between community-based aged care and for-profit aged-care centres. We have seen the continual withdrawal of services from the regions, such as the closure of Roy Wotton Gardens in Eden and Currawarna in Bombala. Information will help us better understand the forces that are driving withdrawal across the regions.

We need to respect older Australians in care and receiving care at home, and I'm proud to be part of a government that is putting care and dignity back at the heart of aged care. A big thankyou to all of those aged-care workers—the nurses, the carers, the cleaners, the cooks, the administrators. It has been a particularly difficult few years across my electorate, from bushfires, where residents were being bussed out of particular areas, to floods to COVID. We appreciate the work you do. We thank you for the work you do in caring for our families. We are behind you, we support you and we want to get this right not only for you but for the residents of these centres.

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