Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Senators Keneally and O’Neill today relating to home care packages.

We know that whenever the Liberals are in government their track record of looking after older Australians and those most vulnerable is terrible. What we've had since 2013 are four failed aged-care ministers. That's the record we have. Today, the question was asked of the minister: can the minister confirm that over the past two years almost 30,000 Australians have died while waiting for their approved home-care package? That's a serious question, and all we hear from the minister are excuses about the royal commission and, 'We called the royal commission.' Well, the reason they had to call a royal commission was their own failings. They have been in government now for seven years and what have they done consecutively? The Prime Minister himself, when he was Treasurer, cut $1.2 billion out of aged care. These are the real facts. And they wonder why we have over 100,000 older Australians who have been assessed still needing home-care packages from level 1 through to the highest levels.

What we have seen is a government that has put everything on hold because it's called a royal commission into its own failings. What the minister won't come into the chamber and tell us is why there are 16 reports still sitting on his desk that have been handed over from one failed minister to another. The minister tried to bring the Tune report into his answer as some sort of: 'Oh, here we are. We're doing something.' Well, there were 38 recommendations in the Tune report and how many recommendations have been implemented? He can't tell us. Very few. Have all those recommendations of the Carnell-Paterson report the minister referred to been implemented? No, they have not.

Older Australians have been assessed as needing home-care packages to enable them to stay at home, because after all that's what older Australians want to do. That's what I would want to do. The government has failed, and then the minister says, 'We've invested in 10,000 more packages.' That was because the figure was well in excess of 110,000, so they had to. That was when the interim report from the royal commission was brought down, and they thought, 'Oh, we'd better do something.' The reality is that this Prime Minister promised that he would do more for older Australians and he has absolutely failed.

As I said, they have used the aged-care sector over the last six or seven years as an ATM: 'We'll just take that money out of there. We'll just take the money out of aged care.' Then they called a royal commission into their own failings. There is no excuse for stalling on making real reforms into this sector and investing, because there's been report after report after report. I've sat on numerous inquiries. We already know. If you actually have any compassion, any understanding of what's happening out in the community in aged care and to older Australians, you would be able to write the royal commission's findings. It's not going to be a surprise, because you've been told; the sector's been telling you.

One of the most serious reflections that has come about because of the government's failings involves aged-care workers. There are some fantastic workers in the aged-care sector—some dedicated workers. The majority of them are. So it's a poor reflection when they get abused in the street because they happen to go into a supermarket with their aged-care uniform on. They're all being painted with the same brush when we hear report after report about older Australians in residential homes who aren't being properly nourished. That reflects on those workers, and they don't deserve that. They do not deserve that. We will stand up for those workers and we will continue to hold this failing, shonky government to account, because older Australians deserve so much better than this. And there are no more excuses. Time is up. We need action and we need it now. (Time expired)