Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020, put forward by Senator Griff. Labor supports transparency in aged-care funding and service provision. We did so when we voted for Senator Griff's amendments to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (New Commissioner Functions) Bill 2019 to achieve these goals and we do so in supporting this bill.

Senator Griff's amendments last year were defeated by the government teaming up with One Nation to vote against transparency in aged-care funding and in how aged-care providers spend—or pocket—the money they get from the government, from their residents and from the residents' families. It's hard to understand how anyone, including One Nation, could oppose Australians having more information about how the more than $20 billion a year of taxpayers' money that goes into the aged-care system to support our older Australians to stay home or go into residential care is spent. When Senator Griff put forward his amendments to achieve just that, in December last year, it was already clear that there were serious problems in aged care. We'd already had the interim report of the royal commission into aged care. It was titled simply Neglect. There was one word to condemn the Morrison government for its administration of the aged-care system in Australia, one word to indict the Prime Minister for his failure to keep safe our parents and our grandparents, one word that should be shameful to this government, and that word was 'neglect'! 'Neglect' was the word the royal commission used to describe this government's care for older Australians.

The commission detailed the shocking failures in individual aged-care homes; it outlined the structural weaknesses in our system. To quote the commission itself:

… the aged care system fails to meet the needs of our older, often very vulnerable, citizens. It does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care for older people. It is unkind and uncaring towards them—

older people, and—

In too many instances, it simply neglects them.

I don't know how members of the government can sit there and listen to those words from the royal commission and not hang their heads in shame for the way they are treating older, vulnerable Australians. The commission says there was 'serious substandard care and unsafe practice' and there was an 'underpaid, undervalued and insufficiently trained workforce'. That was before COVID-19!

It has been frequently said that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't created weaknesses in our society; it has exploited the ones that were already there. That was certainly true in the aged-care sector. Even before COVID-19 hit, the Morrison government was responsible for an aged-care system in crisis. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Richard Colbeck, did very little in the already broken aged-care system to deal with COVID-19. We saw coronavirus tear through aged-care homes. We saw it tear through aged-care homes in New South Wales and then, months later, in Victoria. The Dorothy Henderson Lodge report was handed to the Morrison government in April. Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, and his minister for aged care, Richard Colbeck, did nothing. They knew aged-care facilities would struggle to find staff during a coronavirus outbreak, and they did nothing. They knew about the potential for a disastrous withdrawal of staff at an aged-care home because of coronavirus, but they did not do enough to prepare for it. Six hundred and eighty-five Australians in residential aged care died—died! We know that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID-19 in aged care. It is right there in black and white in the royal commission's special report into COVID-19.

Despite the early warnings, the government didn't do enough or act early enough. They didn't make sure all aged-care workers had easy access to personal protective equipment, didn't make sure aged-care workers had proper quality infection control training, didn't prepare a surge workforce strategy and didn't have any idea how many aged-care workers were working across multiple sites, let alone formulate a policy about it and implement a strategy to make sure that that risk was mitigated and managed. We know that aged-care homes were underprepared when it came to PPE and PPE training. We know it not from the government being transparent and accountable—no, because they refused to be—and not from aged-care providers making their spending and investments transparent, because they don't. We know it because of staff who blew the whistle and because of families and residents who spoke out. They deserve better. They deserve transparency.

I applaud the staff who spoke out. I admire the family members who, in their grief and distress, spoke out. But in a democratic, accountable society such as ours—an open and transparent one—it should not take them speaking out. We should have this type of transparency when it comes to funding in aged care. How much do aged-care homes invest in their staff? How much do they spend on making sure all their staff have PPE? We simply do not know. We would know if the government and One Nation hadn't got together last year to block Senator Griff's amendments. We'd know how much aged-care providers spend on things like food—food! I am telling you, this royal commission report talks about our parents and our grandparents starving in their beds—neglect: disgraceful. We don't know how much aged-care providers spend on food. We don't know how much they spend on medication. We don't know how much they spend on staff wages or how much they spend on staff training. And how much do they pocket as profit? Older Australians need—no, they deserve—to know the answers to these questions so they can make informed decisions about the services they want or the services they need.

Labor supports greater financial transparency. We also believe that Australians should have better access to a broad range of information, including the number of complaints a residential aged-care facility receives, any accreditation failures, the types of accreditation failures, and staffing—the ratio of staffing to residents at various levels of training—as well as measures service providers put in place to deal with accreditation issues. Some of this information is currently provided on the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission website, but it needs to be in a more readable and accessible format and should be on the My Aged Care website. Australians shouldn't have to search for the information they need in order to make informed decisions about their care or the care of their relatives.

This is especially true as the world battles a deadly pandemic. But instead the government has withheld and hidden information about COVID-19 in aged-care facilities that this very government is responsible for. It's just not good enough that failures relating to outbreak preparedness have not been made public. Families, loved ones, deserve transparency. Residents deserve transparency. Staff deserve transparency. They deserve to know whether a nursing home or a home-care provider is safe. They need to know so that they can make those informed decisions. Labor support this bill because we support better access to more information for older Australians and their families and loved ones. Better access to more information can only be to their benefit and to the benefit of the public, so that all Australians can have confidence that taxpayers' money is going to improve care.

The government's failure to improve transparency is one more in a long list of aged-care failures by the Morrison government. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, because this is a government led by a Prime Minister who, when he was Treasurer, cut $1.7 billion from the aged-care budget. Across this chamber we see a minister for aged care who has shown that he is not up to the job. He has lost the confidence of the Australian people—and the parliament, after being censured. One would think that after he let 685 Australians die on his watch the Prime Minister would also have lost confidence in the aged-care minister. But what we've learnt from this parliamentary term is that there is no end to the incompetence you can show as a minister in the Morrison government and still keep your job. Ministerial accountability does not exist under the Morrison government—not for the Leppington Triangle; not for the robodebt, which saw people take their own lives; not for using forged documents to attack a lord mayor; and not for incompetence in and indifference to protecting Australians in residential aged care from COVID-19.

And let's not forget that, for over two years, more than 32,000 older Australians entered residential aged care prematurely because they could not get the home care that they needed. Over the past two years, more than 100,000 older Australians have consistently waited on the Morrison government's never-ending waiting list for their approved home-care package. These are our parents, these are our grandparents—neglected in their own homes; forced to enter a residential aged-care system which is demonstrably broken. 'Neglect'—one word of shame that should hang around this government when it comes to aged care. Older Australians waiting for high-level aged-care packages are waiting for almost three years—three years!—to get the care that they need and that they have been approved to receive. More than 30,000 older Australians have died over three years waiting for their home-care package. Thirty thousand people have died waiting for their home-care package—another sign of neglect from this Morrison government. Waiting times for aged care have grown by almost 300 per cent under the Liberals, with older Australians across the country forced into lengthy queues just to get care.

The government announced 23,000 home-care packages in the budget. That's better than nothing but a lot less than what is needed. And only 2,000 of these packages are for level 4, the highest level of care. Right now, there are more than 15,000 people waiting for their approved level 4 package—15,873 people waiting for a level 4 aged-care package. And what does this government do? It tosses 2,000 out there, like it's The Hunger Games, and says: 'There you go. Just be happy we're doing something.'

This government has done nothing on the hundreds of recommendations from more than a dozen reviews, reports and inquiries. The Morrison government has failed to fully implement even one aged-care recommendation from a landmark report, released back in 2017, to stop elder abuse in aged care. More than 110,000 calls for help went unanswered on the My Aged Care call centre over the last three years. The Morrison government delivered just 38 emergency food packages to older Australians isolating during the COVID-19 lockdown—after it had announced it would deliver 36,000! That's a big difference, between 36,000 and 38—just 38. In the time I have remaining I could probably read out loud every name of those who got one. It's the same old pattern we see over and over from this government: big announcement; little or no delivery. All photo op; no follow-up.

In August this year, the leader of the Australian Labor Party set out the eight steps the Morrison government could take right now to address the issues in aged care. They included: have minimum staffing levels in residential aged care; reduce the home-care package waiting list so more people can stay in their homes for longer; ensure transparency and accountability of funding to support high-quality care; implement measurement and public reporting, as recommended by the royal commission this week; ensure every residential aged-care facility has adequate PPE; have better training for staff, including on infection control; have a better surge workforce strategy; and provide additional resources so the aged-care royal commission can inquire specifically into COVID-19 across the sector while not impacting or delaying handing down the final report.

We know that Australians are angry. They are upset. And they want aged care fixed. How can we so neglect the older generations of this country—the ones who've fought in world wars, the ones who stand up for their communities, the ones who've raised children and built businesses? In their final years of life, when they are sick, when they are vulnerable, they should not be left in their beds, hungry, and, as the aged-care royal commission Interim report:neglect points out, with maggots and ants crawling through their wounds. This is the great shame—it should be the great shame—of the Morrison government and should be the great shame for Australia that we have allowed this to happen.

We know that the people of Australia don't trust the current minister for aged care, Senator Colbeck, to fix these problems. We know that this Senate does not trust that minister, because we have already censured him. Be assured that Labor will continue to hold the Morrison government to account, both in parliament and publicly, on the issues that hundreds of thousands of Australians are concerned about. We will continue to support transparency and accountability in aged-care funding and service provision, and we will support this bill. Older Australians—our parents, our grandparents—their families, their carers, and the staff who work in residential aged care deserve so much better than Scott Morrison's neglect.

Debate adjourned.