House debates

Tuesday, 27 September 2022

Questions without Notice

Aged Care

2:49 pm

Photo of Anne StanleyAnne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Sport. After almost a decade of neglect in aged care, how is the Albanese Labor government reforming the sector and building a workforce to deliver the care that older Australians deserve?

2:50 pm

Photo of Anika WellsAnika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | | Hansard source

I thank the member for Werriwa for her question and take this opportunity to thank her for her continued efforts to look after the welfare and wellbeing of every single constituent in the electorate of Werriwa, and also her unquestioned, well tested capability as a fellow twin mum.

This question is about what the Labor government is doing with respect to the aged-care workforce. We are committed to restoring humanity, dignity, quality and security to aged care. That starts with restoring the value of the aged-care workforce. To this end, I was able to go visit the Burnie Brae Centre in Chermside recently. They have won the national Excellence in Aged Services Award. It's worth noting that they have managed to do that despite the fact that they were one of the many community organisations affected by the floods in Brisbane in February this year. They were able to do that despite the floods and despite 10 years of neglect from the previous federal government, who were deaf to the cries for help from residential facilities, nursing homes, home-care workers and the residents and families themselves.

Residents need more carers with more time to care. That is why the Albanese Labor government is bringing in 24/7 nurses. That is why the Albanese Labor government is bringing in more care minutes. That is why we are addressing the workforce shortages left by 10 years of neglect from this government. The previous government let these workforce shortages build year upon year and did nothing about them; and then in the first week of the new parliament they walked in and said, 'Well, this seems to be a bit of a problem—what are you going to do about it?' Every single person on the other side of the House should have done something with your time in government. And yet you didn't. In fact, the first thing they did when they got their hands on the keys to power in late 2013 was to cut the aged-care workforce contracts. They were so hungry to cut the pay of aged-care workers that they suspended standing orders to do it. That's what they did. They were so hungry that they suspended standing orders to cut pay of aged-care workers.

Here on this side of the House one of the first things we did was make a submission to Fair Work to give them a pay rise. In the first 100 days, we have committed not only to that work, but to fully funding any decision of the commission. We have held an aged-care workforce roundtable, where we got constructive ideas from the stakeholders ignored by the previous government for so many years, and we fed that directly into the jobs summit. The initiatives that came out of the jobs summit will include measures to help aged-care workforce shortages. We're going to increase the permanent migration program's ceiling; we’re going to add an additional $1 billion in joint funding for fee-free TAFE, extend visas, enable people on the age and veterans' pension to earn an additional $4,000. It's active aging in action.