Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I have had the great privilege of representing my community for nearly a decade in this place, and in that time I have seen changes to aged care. I was here before the royal commission. I was here during the royal commission. Of course, I am fortunately still here representing my community now post-royal commission, post this new act, and I can stand here and say that aged care in Australia is worse today for older Australians than what it was five years ago and what it was eight to 10 years ago along every single area where older Australians touch into the system. If we're looking at CHSP, Commonwealth Home Support Program, no new funding's been put in that, and you can't get CHSP—you just can't get it. Places have closed their books. Forget it. The government will give you a code and say, 'Ring up. Ring these places,' and people in my community ring up and tell me, 'They're not even taking my name.' That's the CHSP. That's the low-level support.

Then we look at the new program with respect to home care, and we see that if you are a part pensioner or if you are a self-funded retiree under Support at Home, you're paying anywhere between 50 and 80 per cent of the cost for simple basic help around the home. It's 50 per cent co-charged for a shower if you're a self-funded retiree. It's up to 80 per cent for help with meals and shopping. That's the new system. Then there are the people that are paying those costs if they're not grandfathered. There are 116,000 people who are waiting for an assessment nationally. It has never been so bad. There are 120,000 people who have been assessed who are waiting for a package, and that is why we have so many people in our hospital beds. We have so many older Australians who are desperate for home help, haven't received that home help, then injure themselves, have an infection and end up in our hospital systems. In South Australia, 245 patients, as of 18 November, were in our South Australian metropolitan hospitals while they were waiting for a residential aged-care place.

Let's talk about residential aged-care places. The government in 2024-25 funded a net 578 additional operational residential aged-care places across the nation. Yet there were more than 10,000 places, according to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, needed per year. So we have all these people stuck in the hospital system because they can't get support at home. There is no support at home for them, and they can't get a residential aged-care place either. And so they are paying, in many cases, a very high bed fee per day and they are in there, in many cases, for months and months on end. And they don't want to be there.

Across our nation, we have more than 3,700 patients in that very experience, who are probably going to be spending Christmas in a hospital bed instead of being properly supported at home or, indeed, in a residential bed in an aged-care facility. I talk with older people in my community, particularly those who are trying desperately to support their partners with dementia. They need to get them into residential aged care, but they can't, because there are no places, because the government hasn't funded the places. In fact, if you look back at the last couple of budgets, you will see that they've cut funding for residential aged care. And so we have a system right now where we have state Labor ministers getting up and complaining to the federal government about this situation. They've been left with older Australians in hospital care when really they should have been properly cared for at home or they should have been properly cared for in residential care. So, while people can have all the talking points in the world in this place, I can tell you it's worse today than it was nearly a decade ago. That is the fact. That is the reality for older Australians. So, when you say you're going to put the care back into aged care, do it. Don't just say you're going to do it; actually do it, because you're not doing it right now.

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