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

Last Friday the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was in Adelaide for hearings, and I was quite pleased to hear that the royal commission supports transparency around staffing in aged care. We do not know who works in aged care; we do not know how many registered nurses, carers and enrolled nurses are at each site. In fact, there's no requirement, in South Australia at least, to have a registered nurse in an aged-care facility, and it is really just woeful. It needs to be addressed by government. I brought a bill into this House. The bill went to an inquiry. It was supported that the bill should be made law, and yet here we are, more than 12 months later, and nothing has been done.

I'm very supportive of the inquiry's recommendations, and I might just raise a couple of them here: introducing legally enforceable, mandatory minimum staffing ratios for residents in aged care; a minimum number of care minutes between 186 minutes and 265 minutes—I mean, that alone is really minimal—30 minutes of care time by a registered nurse per resident per day; a minimum of 22 minutes of care by an allied health professional; and mandatory minimum staffing of at least one registered nurse on shift at all times. We are failing older people in Australia if we do not address this in this parliament at this time today.