Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Ageing (Senator Santoro) to questions without notice asked by Senators McLucas and Webber today relating to aged care.

I should say that they were responses, not answers, in my motion. I have to say it was a particularly poor effort by the Minister for Ageing today. I am sure Senator Webber will go to the substance of the answer to her question, but even in the question that I asked, which went to the issue of fire safety, the only reason the minister got onto answering the question was because he was called to order by our leader in the Senate.

He started off by filling in time talking about something that happened in 1994. Yes, we did do an inquiry into aged care in 1994, but let us remember that is 12 years ago and to rely on something that occurred 12 years ago as a defence for what the government is currently doing is a pretty long bow to draw. Yes, the Labor government in 1994 was concerned about aged care; yes, we undertook an inquiry; and yes, we started the process of delivering the response to that inquiry. For the minister to say that something that happened in 1994 was the reason that we are in this mess and therefore it was of course always the Labor Party’s fault, I have to say, is a pretty poor defence. Senator Santoro also accused me—and he does at every possible occasion—of scaremongering. I refute that allegation absolutely and I will continue to do so.

The simple fact is that there are 217 residential aged care facilities out of nearly 3,000 in Australia that do not comply with the 1999 Commonwealth fire safety standards. Many senators in this place know this story: there was a discussion with the aged care sector and agreement between the aged care sector and the government that there needed to be improvement in building standards and fire safety. It was an agreed position. The Labor Party agreed with that position. The government allocated $3,500 for every resident in every aged care facility in Australia in order to achieve that goal. Labor agreed with that as well, but Labor at that point said, ‘What are the processes that this government is putting in place to ensure that that money is spent on improving building standards and fire safety?’ That is where the policy flaw in the government’s proposal is: there is no assurance that the money allocated, the $513.3 million, will end up being spent on improving building standards and fire safety.

I think the minister himself said, ‘The overwhelming majority has been spent wisely.’ That is simply not good enough. When you spend over half a billion dollars and you come to the view that the overwhelming majority was spent wisely, the taxpayers of Australia do not think that is good enough. We need to have an acquittal process where we can be assured that the money that was allocated by this government is actually spent improving the safety of older, vulnerable Australians who live in residential aged care facilities in Australia.

I ask the question: how does the minister know that the overwhelming majority of that money was spent wisely? There is no process for the minister to understand how much was spent and where. What is going to happen to those facilities where the money was not spent wisely? It is not good planning. It was a good policy with a bad structure when it was implemented because we were never quite sure that the money was going to end up where it was intended.

We still do not know what is going to happen to those 217 facilities. Some apparently are going to have a review. I will have a good, close look at the Hansard to find out what the minister did actually say. But I am very concerned about the three—and I will check again with the Hansard—facilities in Australia who refuse to engage with the government, who refuse to tell the government what they are going to do in order to meet the 1999 fire safety compliance, and the government are not doing anything about it in order to ensure that money was spent wisely. (Time expired)