Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In regard to the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, it is important to put on record some of the concerns the coalition has in relation to aged care. I just listened to the member for Indi very closely. She is concerned about some changes whereby the minister would have all of the say over changes that would previously have been legislative. You'd expect a crossbencher to say that. I think we do need to allow ministers to be ministers. They have oversight of departments and of secretaries of departments, and I would actually like to see, in one sense, ministers not just be a tick and flick for departments and for secretaries. I think that is occurring way too much.

In this government I think we have a lot of ministers who are very cautious and careful about the NACC and about the ability for a person to make anonymous a complaint about a minister who doesn't abide by the wishes of their secretary or their department. Therefore, they are nervous about making a decision and very nervous about a referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. I think we elect ministers to be ministers. Secretaries will never have their names on a ballot paper, nor will faceless officials or bureaucrats. Ministers are there to be ministers, and I think this is going to be so important.

Now, when it comes to aged care, I represent a lot of aged-care centres and, whether they're in Cootamundra, Cowra, Harden-Murrumburrah, Junee, Temora, Young or even a large centre such Wagga Wagga, they are really struggling at the moment. I know the interim report of the royal commission into aged care had 'Neglect' in its title, and some of the examples that were exposed and came to light because of that investigation were horrendous—there's absolutely no question about that. But the government then, in a kneejerk response, adopted that recommendation to just have registered nurses 24/7 for each and every aged-care centre. This has placed so much pressure on aged-care centres in rural and remote Australia, and they are closing at far too rapid a rate. We need them to be opening, not closing.

Let's just take a little facility such as one that I know of within an easy drive of Wagga Wagga. It had around 20 clients, most of whom did not require the sort of care that would need a nurse on hand 24/7, but all of a sudden they have to provide that around-the-clock supervision by an RN. Now, for an aged-care provider such as this, it's not just one person. When we take into account annual leave, stress leave, maternity leave, domestic violence leave—all the sorts of leave for an RN that is part and parcel of any workplace these days—you need about five people to cover that one position 24/7. Obviously, people can only work a certain number of hours each day—preferably around eight—therefore, you're going to need three people a day to cover that 24-hour around-the-clock supervision. You can't just have those three people working all year around. You need about five or six people.

When you've got those little centres looking after 20 people who are pretty healthy, it does provide a huge impost on their finances. They can only afford to charge as much as they can. What we then end up seeing is a lot of the little aged-care providers closing down—and they're often in little towns—and then people cannot age in place. So what happens is that a person who has lived in a little town all of their lives all of a sudden gets packed up and shipped off to a large rural hub in a regional city, and then they don't get the visitors. They don't have their family close by. People cannot visit them. All too often, we see this happening across regional Australia. It's an unintended consequence, I appreciate, of what I guess was a well-intended recommendation of the royal commission, but it is placing such a burden on aged-care providers in regional Australia, which were already struggling to make ends meet. In the main, they were doing a wonderful job. They really were. Yes, you're always going to get examples of bad eggs doing the wrong thing and putting the making of money first and the provision of health care for our vulnerable aged people second. But, in the main, particularly in regional Australia, our providers are doing a great job.

I visited a centre at an aged-care provider at Boorowa recently, and they're doing a fantastic job. I pay great credit to them. I know that Mayor Rick Firman OAM, who is actually in parliament today, is still keen to see the $3.7 million that was allocated by the coalition government to Whiddon homes in Temora see the light of day. They made changes to the infrastructure that they were going to provide. It was COVID. There were a whole lot of other factors that came into play, but now they're still waiting and wondering where their money is, and they're not seeing any gratification from the Labor government, which says it's going to be a government for all and leave no-one behind. Well, unfortunately, Temora is being left behind in this regard. I would urge and implore the aged-care minister to pay attention to that request by Whiddon homes in Temora. Temora, like many of our regional cities, towns, villages, hamlets and districts, has an ageing population, and particularly so. We want to see people be able to age in place.

The Coolamon aged-care centre recently reopened a wing of around 10 to a dozen beds, which had been closed because they couldn't find staff, and that's another big problem. I appreciate, Deputy Speaker Payne, that you're from Canberra. It wouldn't be the issue for the aged-care centres in your electorate that it is in the Riverina. My electorate now shares a common boundary with yours, but that line on that map—there's a big difference between the haves and have-nots, let me tell you. It's more than just a line on a map. At Coolamon, they couldn't find staff. They had to go and get special provisions to get staff in from overseas so that they could reopen that wing. Let me tell you, the beds were filled very, very quickly. Coolamon is not that far from Wagga Wagga, but, even in Wagga Wagga, the aged-care beds are all taken up very, very quickly.

With the passage of the Albanese government's Aged Care Act 2024 in the last parliament, the coalition upheld its commitment to a rights based act for older Australians to guarantee a world-class aged-care system into the future. We are absolutely going to be needing a world-class aged-care system into the future because we're all getting older, and the older we get, the more that aged-care centre looms. We should all be very nice to our children, because I think it's ultimately them who are going to make the decisions about where we go and when we go! Through our coalition's persistent negotiations on the act, we were able to achieve significant improvements to the government's reforms—albeit proposed at the time—to protect the interests of older Australians and future generations.

I know a lot of our aged-care centres in rural Australia often community-led, community-run and community-supported organisations. They are locals who form committees and trusts, and run these places not for profit, and, by gee, they do a remarkable job. One of the most critical outcomes of our efforts was the introduction of grandfathering arrangements. These arrangements guarantee that Australians who are already in residential aged care on a home-care package, or are assessed as waiting for their allocated home-care package, will not see any changes to their existing arrangements. That is important. I know the member for Indi talked about the number of Australia who are still waiting for their home-care packages to come through, and this delay is not helping matters.

One of the situations with the staffing arrangements in rural Australia is not helped by the number of people who are now going to work on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and getting out of aged care. I appreciate the government—and I do appreciate it, I mean that in every sense of the word—has increased the pay for aged-care workers and I commend the government for that. They are doing a wonderful job for, in some cases, Australia's most vulnerable. But it still doesn't equate to some of the money being earned in the NDIS space, and we have lost a lot of good workers, people who had qualifications, people who went to TAFE and elsewhere to gain those qualifications and are now leaving the aged-care sector and going to work in the NDIS space because they can earn a lot more money. Their skills have been lost by aged care, and that is a great shame.

It's no surprise that in the first week of the 48th Parliament the government has introduced this bill to amend 325 items of Labor's own legislation, passed just months ago. That's why we seek to have this bill set to committee—to ensure appropriate scrutiny is placed upon the proposed amendments. I say that, even though I do believe ministers have a responsibility to not just tick-and-flick the in-tray proliferation which secretaries and departments sometimes put in front of them. I know—I've been a minister. I know how this is the case.

We remain increasingly concerned and disappointed by the lack of transparency this government has shown during the process of reform. Those 325 changes to Labor's own legislation is not an insignificant number. And 197 repeals to Labor's own legislation is also not an insignificant number. Many of these are a result of Labor's lack of consultation with older Australians and the broader aged-care sector. When ministers and even bureaucrats are making these sorts of reforms, they really should reach out, particularly to those NFPs I mentioned earlier to see these community-led and community-run organisations and what they're doing, and ask: 'How is this going to affect what you do? How is this going to affect your bottom line?' They are not making riches, trust me. What they are doing is putting in place measures to keep the lights on, keep the doors open and keep the beds for people who are seeking to go into aged care and who have lived in those local communities all of their lives. It is simply not right that they are left high and dry because of decisions made in this city which affect their lives. They then have to be packed up and shipped away to far-off aged-care centres in communities they are not familiar with, with people they do not know. Whilst I appreciate that they were still provided, hopefully, quality care, it's just got to be more than that. We have to be more empathetic and more sympathetic to the needs of our aged-care residents and also our aged-care providers in regional, rural and especially remote Australia.

We won't seek to delay the passage of this bill, Australians deserve better than broken promises and more procrastination and delay by this Albanese Labor government—I understand that—but these changes have to be scrutinised to ensure the process of reform can be implemented in the best way possible, because, at the end of the day, our society is ageing, and we need to provide the very best quality of care. But, for want of a better word, there that also needs to be the quantity of care, and, in regional Australia at the moment, it's tough. It's tough for these providers to make ends meet. They do a grand job. I take my hat off to them, and people, like those who are running the centre at Gundagai, are doing it really tough.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.

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