Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to resume the debate on these bills that are the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Care Charges (Amendment) Bill 2014. In doing so, I follow the comments of the member for Moreton, who is in the chamber right now. He was speaking when this debate was adjourned on Thursday afternoon. I endorse his comments and obviously I will add to them in my own contribution to this legislation.

This legislation is another example of right-wing ideology coming from the Abbott government and the Abbott government's obsession with unions rather than with good policy. Regrettably, the real losers as a result of this legislation will be the elderly residents of aged-care facilities, and in particular the weak, the frail and the disabled who are the most dependent on the care provided by aged-care workers from within those facilities. But as has already been made very clear by the Abbott government, it has very little concern or empathy for the most vulnerable in our community and, as we have seen from a range of Abbott government budget measures, the elderly are also being targeted by this government.

The facts speak for themselves. We saw in the budget in May changes proposed to the pension indexation, which will affect some 2.4 million pensioners. The government knows full well that the proposed indexation changes that it has in mind will result in less pension payments being made to pensioners. The government has also proposed to increase the pension age to 70, which again means that people will have to work longer before they are entitled to a pension. Indeed, it has proposed to do so without making any provisions whatsoever for matters such as workers compensation. We then see the government coming into the House and proposing to add a $7 medical co-payment for a range of medical services, again knowing full well that one of the groups that will be hit hardest by the proposition will be pensioners because, as people get older, it is just logical that they are likely to go to doctors more often and they will indeed have to fork out the $7 each time they go to a doctor or for one of the complimentary services.

We also saw the government axing the $886 payment per year to some 300,000 Australian seniors by axing the senior supplement. Again, a measure brought in without any warning, without telling pensioners before the election that that was what it was going to do; it just went ahead and did it. And we also see the government wanting to freeze the eligibility thresholds for the pension and pension-related payments for three years from 2017. Again, this will affect older people, as will permanently freezing the energy supplement.

I make those comments because they fit in with the narrative of this government—that is, it has no empathy for those people doing it the toughest and it has no empathy for those people struggling the most. It is prepared to make its cuts on the back of those people who can least afford them. The government will argue that under this bill the funding is not being cut, but rather that it is being 'freed up'; instead of being tied to staff pay and conditions, it argues that operators of aged-care facilities are in the best position to determine how any money provided to them by the government should be spent.

That may sound reasonable, but in reality if the funding is untied very little of additional Commonwealth money provided to aged-care centres will result in better care for residents. It is the personal care provided to residents by the staff who work within those centres that matters most to the aged-care residents and to their families. It is the personal care that they can rely on that means the most because without that care, in fact, it is simply just a room and a bed for them to be within. It is the care that they are seeking, and that care comes from the provision of adequate staffing levels within those centres and that is what Labor tried to address when it tied this funding to the provision of additional staff or to better staff wages and conditions.

I regularly visit aged-care facilities within my electorate. I speak to the staff within them, I speak to the residents within them, I speak to family members who are there at the time, and I also speak to the owners and the managers of those centres. What has become absolutely clear to me is that while some centres operate better than others, the truth of the matter is most of them are struggling to make ends meet. And because they are struggling to make ends meet, they obviously cut costs wherever they can. In fact, so much so that the staffing levels of most centres, I think it would be fair to say, could be improved by having more staff on board. Indeed, most of the centres I have visited heavily rely on volunteers to provide the daily services of those centres. I doubt very much that some of those centres would be able to continue were it not for the support that volunteers provide to them. I commend the volunteers for doing that. I think it is a great thing that they do. I think they do it because they genuinely care and it comes from the heart when they do go in there to volunteer. But the reality is that we simply cannot rely entirely on the volunteers either, because the volunteers are generally there during the day but not overnight.

This is an industry where, again, it has been made abundantly clear as a result of several inquiries and reports over the years that the people that work within this industry are considered to be on relatively low wages, have a very responsible and demanding workload and, not surprisingly, have very high staff turnovers. High staff turnovers adds to worsening care levels as new staff are constantly having to familiarise themselves with the individual personalities and the needs of residents. The residents themselves quite often, after a while, become comfortable with particular staff that are there. If they see new faces they in turn become unsettled and sometimes stressed as a result of that. So it is important, if we can, to try and maintain staff within the sector.

So tying the additional funding to staff wages and conditions was the best way to ensure that the residents were direct beneficiaries of additional Commonwealth funding. Indeed, the workforce supplement was deliberately intended to address the retention, remuneration, education, training and career development of aged-care workers. Of course, tying the funding to the workforce does not suit all aged-care operators, nor does it suit the Abbott government.

We know Australians are living longer, as indeed are people across the world, and we need to plan for the needs of an ageing population. The number of people requiring aged care is expected to increase by 250 per cent over the next 40 years. By 2050, around 3.5 million Australians are expected to be using aged-care services. Logically, if people are living longer there will be additional health care costs, more people will be admitted to aged-care facilities and more people will be affected by dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

My understanding is that around 80 per cent of the services that we will need to provide, and that we are currently providing, still occur in the family home. That does not mean that we can continue to absorb all of those services within the home. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a need for more aged-care places in the future as well. I also accept that right now there are about 2 ½ million carers throughout Australia providing unpaid care. Again, they do that because they care about the family member, neighbour, or whoever it is that they are caring for. But that also comes at an extraordinary financial and health cost to the carers themselves. Burnout, mental strain and chronic disease are prevalent amongst carers themselves, which in turn then adds to the health costs of the nation. In fact, we have services in my own region that deliberately provide respite to carers in acknowledgement of the stress and strain that they themselves are under.

But the simplistic attitude of the Abbott government in response to ensuring that the aged-care sector is sustainable into the future is to cut government expenditure and cut government assistance to the elderly when in fact it should be adopting strategies that minimise or reduce expenditure in years to come by being proactive now. For example, increasing superannuation contributions now instead of freezing them as the Abbott government is doing would reduce the burden of pension payments into the future. Providing incentives to set aside money for their future instead of penalising people with higher deeming rates as the Abbott government is doing would mean there would be more savings made by people to enable them to be self-sufficient in the future as well.

In contrast, what we see is a series of measures by this government that do the exact opposite. First is the abolishment of the $1.1 billion aged-care workforce supplement, which this bill specifically targets. Second is the dumping of the dimensions of behaviour supplement of $16.15 a day. Third is the slashing of the aged-care payroll tax supplement from 1 January 2025, worth $653 million over four years. They did that without any consultation or warning.

We know that, according to the Aged Care Financing Authority, the residential aged-care sector will need to build approximately 74,000 additional aged-care places over the next decade. That requires an investment of some $25 billion over the next decade. How can you secure that kind of investment when the government is making it tougher for aged-care operators and aged-care investors to get a return on their money? You cannot. Again, this is being negative rather than proactive in order to save a few dollars today. It means that whatever dollars we do save today will be paid for many times over in years to come.

I want to quickly talk about the dementia supplement worth $16.15 per day. This was a supplement introduced by Labor in August 2013 in recognition of the additional costs incurred by facilities that have to care for people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. The payment was terminated on 31 July this year, again without any consultation and no warning to the centre operators or to the patients themselves. I have been approached on this issue on several occasions by families that have been directly affected by the cut of this payment of $16.15 per day—over $100 per week. The net effect of this is that the providers are left with either having to cut the services or increase the cost to the residents, neither of which is acceptable to them. Either way, the resident—the person who needs the care—is left worse off. Regrettably, we have in Australia today some 300,000 Australians living with dementia. My understanding is that about 30 per cent of them are in residential care facilities and it is expected that those figures will treble over the next 40 or so years unless, of course, there is a medical breakthrough. So, rather than walking away from this issue, we should be trying to be proactive in our management of it.

I support the amendment moved by Labor's shadow minister for ageing. I believe it is sensible and fair. The shadow minister attended a forum that I hosted in my electorate several weeks ago at the Para Hills community centre. The venue was full. The people at the forum made it absolutely clear that these are the very issues that they are concerned about and want our side of parliament to stand up for them on. They are the very issues they are so critical of the government on for bringing in in the 2014 budget. I believe the amendment is sensible. Whilst I understand we will be supporting this legislation, I urge the Minister for Health, who is sitting at the table, to take note of the amendment.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank those who have contributed to the debate on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Care Charges (Amendment) Bill 2014. These two bills introduce several minor amendments to aged-care and health related legislation. One measure is consequential amendments to reflect the 2014 budget measure to repurpose the aged-care workforce supplement. A second measure in the bill will support the implementation of stage 2 of the aged-care gateway and online information portal and contact centre. The two bills will also make amendments to allow the recovery of past home care costs where the care recipient receives a compensation payment, as is currently possible in relation to residential care costs. Lastly, there are some minor clarifying and technical amendments to aged-care legislation to remove redundant provisions and ensure the legislation operates as intended.

The government will not be supporting the opposition's second reading amendment. I commend the bills to the House.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Blair has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.