Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are few more pressing issues that face Australia today than that of aged care. Our population is getting older. Today, at least one out of every seven Australians is aged over 65 and that number is predicted to double in coming decades. By 2050, over 3½ million Australians are expected to use aged-care services at some point each year.

The issue of aged care is particularly relevant to my electorate of Goldstein, which has 23,000 constituents, or 16.5 per cent, aged 65 and older. Furthermore, an additional 17,000 people are aged 55 to 64 and will start to consider their aged-care needs in the coming years.

There are 34 aged-care facilities in my electorate doing their best to cater for the increasing demand, which, like facilities across the country, are dealing with the growing and alarming evidence that the aged-care sector cannot provide the care that Australians expect.

Yet, despite increasing demand across the country, only around 40 per cent of residential facilities are operating at a profit. Providers are walking away from the aged-care sector, due to the lack of viability in providing high-care beds and the increasing red-tape requirements imposed by this Labor government. Providers are handing back licences and senior Australians are having to wait longer and travel further to find a bed, which in turn places higher pressure on the public hospital system and on families. This is in stark contrast to the situation under the last coalition government, when aged-care places were highly sought after.

The Labor government's Living Longer Living Better aged-care reform package was announced 13 months ago. It has taken the government all this time to bring the legislation to this place and now it wants to ram these bills through without proper consideration.

The coalition referred these bills to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee to examine the full impact on how these changes will affect providers, older Australians, their families and carers. The inquiry heard evidence that facilities with 60 beds or less would be worse off financially and may be forced to close or amalgamate. The inquiry raised many issues about the complexity of the bills with the Department of Health and Ageing which are still outstanding.

The government ignored almost all of the Productivity Commission's inquiry findings and recommendations. About seven or eight per cent of the Productivity Commission's findings are incorporated in this legislation.

That is typical of the way in which this government has conducted itself on so many fronts. It is a government which is highly dysfunctional, a government which is ignoring good advice and a government which is not consulting with those sectors about which it is passing very significant legislation. This is another example, again, in the aged-care area of such an approach. The government is ramming things through. It is like a conveyor belt of regulations passing us each day, of bills being guillotined and passed to the Senate, rammed through there with the help of the Greens, and with the consideration of industries and sectors being the last thought on this government's mind. It is only concerned about its own future, not the future of the country.

The coalition will consider amendments, following the reporting of the Senate inquiry and will seek to pass amendments in the Senate. There is another way: the coalition would negotiate an aged-care provider agreement with the aged-care sector. This first-ever aged care provider agreement would set the framework for ageing and aged-care arrangements in Australia over the next four years and into the future. It would consult and it would involve the industry. It would only be settled with the industry, with agreement and consensus around the table. Taking into account as well the Productivity Commission's Caring for older Australians report we would reduce needless bureaucracy in the sector, while ensuring the sector remains focused on high-quality care. We would protect and strengthen Medicare by restoring the private health insurance rebate as soon as we responsibly could. This can only happen with a change of government.