Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the fact that Senator Polley has raised this very important issue for debate this afternoon. Before I begin my contribution, I would like just to congratulate my two colleagues the shadow minister for ageing and mental health, the Hon. Julie Collins MP, and Senator Polley, for the great job they've done in the area of aged care, holding the government to account and developing our policies, because we need a strong alternative to this government. The government's cuts in recent budgets to the aged-care sector have been cruel and unwarranted, and they need to be looked into.

Labor has been saying for a long time that the aged-care system is in a state of national crisis. Unfortunately, when the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bill Shorten, raised the crisis in the sector in parliament earlier this year, the government attacked him and accused him of fearmongering. They even claimed his comments were akin to elder abuse.

Australians think of our country as a caring nation. We should respect our older Australians for all they have contributed to the nation and all that they contribute still. Sadly, we have seen the concerning images in the recent Four Corners program, and it is clear—very, very clear—that actions need to be taken. Labor is appalled and angry about the vision and stories that aired during Four Corners recently.

Like every other Australian that saw that, I was saddened to see the crisis in our nation's aged-care system, particularly the standard of care being delivered in some nursing homes. Australians, across our nation, are genuinely shocked about the abuses that have happened to elderly Australians—beloved elderly family members who deserve quality care. We must give elderly Australians the love, the care and the respect that they so mightily deserve.

Labor welcomes the aged-care royal commission. It is an important instrument that will get to the heart of the issues in the aged-care sector. We're glad that the government has called for one, but it wasn't that long ago that Minister Wyatt and the government were claiming that we didn't need a royal commission. However, just before that episode of Four Corners was aired, suddenly they were calling for a royal commission. Let me say, that does not absolve the government of their own contribution to this crisis.

After five years in government, every one of those people opposite must accept some responsibility for what's happening today in the aged-care system. The Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, must take responsibility for much of the crises that we are seeing. As Treasurer of Australia, it was he who was responsible for the cuts of $1.2 billion from the aged-care sector in the 2016-17 budget. This cut to aged care came on top of the almost $500 million from aged-care funding Mr Morrison cut in the 2015 MYEFO. This money was taken out of the aged-care budget and hasn't come back. Although the government keeps disputing the $1.2 billion figure, let me make it clear that it's in the government's own words that we can actually confirm the cut. You only have to look at the budget papers signed off by the current Prime Minister when he was Treasurer. His name is on these papers in black and white. The cuts he's denying can be found on page 101 of the 2016-17 budget paper 2, where it says:

The Government will achieve efficiencies of $1.2 billion over four years through changes to the scoring matrix of the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI) that determines the level of funding paid to aged care providers. The Government will also reduce indexation of the Complex Health Care component of the ACFI by 50 per cent in 2016-17 and establish a $53.3 million transitional assistance fund to support providers.

Further, on the same page, the government states:

The savings from this measure will be redirected by the Government.

So how do you get savings without a cut? Of course at the time of the 2016-17 budget, there were strong voices in the sector opposed to this $1.2 billion cut. Those voices including the AMA, the Aged Care Guild and Catholic Health Australia. At the time, the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

The Turnbull government's $1.2 billion of aged care funding cuts could force smaller providers to close down or sell up and may lower standards of care for the elderly, industry groups warn.

Even the share market reacted, with the same article stating:

Investors reacted negatively to the news, sending the shares of listed aged care providers Regis, Japara, and Estia down 6.6 per cent, 3.8 per cent, and 2.6 per cent respectively.

The government cannot rewrite history, no matter how much they would like to and no matter how much they've tried. It's clear that Mr Morrison as Treasurer used aged-care funding to prop up his budget without considering the elder Australians who would be impacted. We have now had five years of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, but when will they start taking responsibility for the outcomes of government? Have they forgotten that they've controlled the Treasury purse strings all this time?

The royal commission must examine the impact of the Liberals' years of cuts, because you can't fix aged care by cutting funding to it. It's sadly inevitable that, in some areas, standards in the care of older Australians have begun to slip under the weight of these cuts. This government has failed to take the care of older Australians seriously enough, and you can see that through their ministerial arrangements. The coalition does not have a minister for ageing, and the aged-care portfolio is not even included in the cabinet. And due to their continuous infighting, we have seen three different aged-care ministers across the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, who have had carriage of the Living Longer Living Better reforms for five years but who have all failed to do little if any reforms across the ageing portfolio.

Sadly, the current minister for aged care, Mr Ken Wyatt, has struggled to progress further reform that is needed in aged care because Mr Morrison, the current PM, appears to view aged-care funding as a commodity to be cut and used elsewhere. There have been several inquiries into the aged-care sector which the government hasn't acted on. More than a dozen reviews, reports and inquiries still sit on the minister's desk without being actioned. They just sit there collecting dust. Maybe they're being used as book ends. Maybe he rests a cup of coffee on them, who knows, but what's happening is they're not being acted on.

The government's cherrypicked its way through a number of key reports and reviews leading to aged-care reform now being piecemeal in nature. The quality standards and reporting system aren't working. There aren't enough aged-care workers and they aren't given enough pay, respect or support. The role of nurses and personal care workers in the care of our older Australians is critical and will only become increasingly important. The number of people aged 85 years is rapidly increasing and it's projected to double by 2032. We'll need to see a tripling of the aged-care workforce in the next 30 years to provide a high standard of living and care for this growing proportion of older Australians. It's predicted that the aged-care workforce requirements will need to increase from around 366,000 currently to around one million people in 2050. It is clear that the government's got to ensure that we have an adequately skilled and equipped aged-care workforce to care for our rapidly ageing population.

The savage cuts hit older Australians in residential aged-care facilities the hardest, with a 50 per cent cut to the indexation of complex health care subsidies. Prime Minister Morrison and the Liberals cannot be trusted to ensure that older Australians get the aged-care services that they need.

Outside of residential aged care, we also have the majority of older Australians who are receiving care in their homes. This is another area that's been mismanaged by the government—the home care package waitlist. The government has a history of delaying reporting on this important data. The March 2018 quarter was delayed by three months and the June 2018 data is now late, even after the minister committed to releasing this data on time. They're just sitting on the data, and I'm not sure why. I have to ask: why are they just sitting on that data? Is it something that they don't want us to see? Whatever the reason, it's completely unacceptable.

Under the government's watch there are now more than 108,000 people on the home care package waiting list, including 88,000 people with high needs, many of whom are living with dementia. Around 54,000 of these older Australians who are waiting have no home care package at all. Those are 54,000 Australians who are not getting the support they need to shower and get ready in the morning or with cleaning around their homes or with any number of issues. That support could make life just a little bit easier for them. Those are 54,000 Australians who do not receive the dignity or live with the dignity that they deserve. We should judge ourselves as a nation by how we treat our elderly. How can the government say it's treating older Australians with dignity when more than 100,000 of them are waiting for care? Labor's called on the government time and time again to fix this crisis but, like the 108,000 older Australians, we're still waiting for action.

Today in question time I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care, Senator Scullion, three simple questions. These questions were very straightforward: how many older Australians are currently on the government's home care package waitlist; how many older Australians currently on the government's home care package waitlist are receiving no home care package at all; and how long are some older Australians being forced to wait for their approved package level or, worse still, are without any home care package at all? I was hugely disappointed by Minister Scullion's answers to my questions on this issue—hugely disappointed!—because he just made motherhood statements about keeping senior Australians in their homes, and his answers, when he finally got to some numbers, used outdated data to try and understate the demand. He wouldn't even use an accurate figure. He used a figure from 31 December 2017, almost nine months out of date, when his own minister had used the 108,000 figure earlier. That's the government's own number. That's Minister Wyatt's own number, and Minister Scullion couldn't use it. They were absolutely shameful and disastrous answers to three very simple questions.

Then we had Minister Canavan arguing that asking for this information in question time shouldn't even be allowed—seriously!—and that the minister shouldn't even be expected to answer any question that involves statistics. It was utterly unbelievable, but I know why Senator Canavan did that. He did it because he was trying to save Minister Scullion from his own ineptitude and the rest of the nation from seeing it. If the minister isn't able to answer a basic question, maybe he should consider a different career choice.

Australia needs a national dementia strategy to help it deal with the growing toll that this disease is taking on senior Australians. Many older Australians living in aged-care facilities have dementia, and they're simply not getting the high level of care that they need. A very dear friend of mine recently spent her final weeks and months living with dementia in an aged-care facility. Over the past few years and months, I've seen a lot of what happens in this area. I've seen the limitations of staff. I've seen that staff aren't able to take the time they would like to care for their clients. I've seen the understaffing and overworking of the carers and staff who are doing their very, very best under huge pressure to save both time and money.

We can't wait for the results of the royal commission to start undertaking important reforms. They have to start now. The quality standards and the reporting system aren't working. There aren't enough aged-care workers, as I have said before—and I gave the numbers earlier about how much the system needs to grow because we've got such an ageing population. They aren't given enough pay, respect or support.

Just earlier this week, I met with representatives from the Health and Community Services Union who cover workers in this area in Tasmania. Their members are passionate about providing high-quality care for the senior Australians that they look after. Can you imagine though how hurt these members were when former Prime Minister Turnbull told them to get a better job. That tells us what this government thinks about aged-care workers and aged care in general. No wonder the sector's in crisis, if this is the attitude of the government towards workers.

The union and their members are extremely concerned about the crisis the aged-care sector is in because, unfortunately, not all operators do the right thing by their clients or their staff. The union emphasised to me just the other day the need for accredited training and increasing the size of the workforce. We also need to ensure workers get appropriate levels of pay which will drive professionalism in the industry and give workers the security to make major decisions and to stay in the industry. It's not good enough to tell aged-care workers to get a better job. They already have a good job; they just need to be recognised for it and provided with the resources they need to be able to do it well.

In conclusion, the Prime Minister has been the architect of cuts that have gutted aged care and put the sector under immense pressure. We're in the midst of an aged-care crisis because of the actions, and the lack of actions, by those on the other side of the chamber. And when the now Prime Minister cut $1.2 billion from the funding for people with complex and higher needs in the 2016 budget that actually contributed dramatically to the problems in the system. The Prime Minister must take responsibility. He cannot pretend his cuts as Treasurer were nothing to do with him or that they had no impact. He cannot keep misleading people. The cuts were in his own budget papers, and the stakeholders reacted to the cuts at the time.

The royal commission must investigate the impact of the Prime Minister's cuts to the sector when he was Treasurer. The government must not exclude their cuts from the royal commission's terms of reference and hide from the responsibility that will lie at their feet. So, while the chaotic and divided Liberals have fought amongst themselves, the care of older Australians has been sadly neglected. We must fix this crisis now, because it would be a great injustice to our vulnerable senior Australians to do otherwise.