Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Senators Gallagher, Bilyk and Watt today relating to aged care.

The crisis facing elderly Australians in our nursing homes is hardly new. For years now, since well before the royal commission into aged care, we've been hearing heartbreaking and harrowing stories from constituents about exactly what it's like for residents and workers in these facilities. Twenty-two reports and a royal commission on, however, and Australia's most vulnerable find themselves in the aged-care sector's deepest and most profound crisis yet, and we have a minister in charge who simply doesn't turn up and do the job that the aged-care sector need him to do. I've been getting constituent feedback, people reaching out, telling me exactly how difficult it is in aged care at the moment and how the response from government has been completely inadequate.

The government would have you believe that nobody could see this coming, that there was no way we could have protected people in residential aged care. That is simply not true. I accept that this crisis hasn't been made by COVID-19, because the structural weakness in aged care exists beyond that. For the last eight years—heading into their ninth year—the government have paid lip service to aged care. They have refused, following review after review, to do anything. Then, when it was reaching crisis point, this Prime Minister called a royal commission. In a way, it bought him another year not to fix the issues in aged care. Throughout those hearings we heard story after story about how the aged-care system wasn't able to deal with the pressures that exist. One of the fundamental issues is workforce—the fact that the government refuse to acknowledge that the aged-care workforce is undervalued and underpaid. They would rather point the finger at Labor, accuse us of spending more money than they do by supporting aged-care workers, than actually stump up and put a submission to the Fair Work Commission arguing for better wages for aged-care workers. It is simply not tenable to retain a professional workforce and pay them less than you would pay my teenager to work on the weekend. They do the caring in these facilities. They are the ones that provide the meals, that clean the rooms, that clean older Australians—and this government thinks it's completely acceptable for them to exist on $22 per hour, to do the work of angels and to be the heroes of this pandemic. That is one of the biggest pressures facing the aged-care system and one this government refuses to accept. It is one of the pressures that has caused the most challenges for elderly Australians living in aged care during the pandemic—because, the minute the workforce is out, the quality of care suffers.

And that's what we've seen in thousands of aged-care facilities right around the country: as workers got sick, this government's response was to change the criteria for how long they had to isolate. It was: 'Oh well, get back to work sooner, once you've got rid of COVID if you could, because we really need you in the workplace.' It wasn't to deal comprehensively with the issues these workers or facing or the stress they feel when they can't provide the care to the people they look after. I've heard deeply distressing stories from workers who have worked 16-hour shifts and been unable to spend time with people who are lonely and isolated and scared. The nature of the workforce means it attracts extremely caring people. For that situation to be there every single day as they work extended shifts and double shifts and come back the next day after five hours sleep is deeply distressing to them.

This government is disingenuous when it says it is dealing with the issues. It is not dealing with the issues. The sector has been in crisis for years. It's in complete crisis now and the government doesn't have a long-term plan about how to address those challenges. As long as they keep their head in the sand about workforce and the pay rates for aged-care workers, nothing is going to improve at all. The people who pay that price are older Australians who rely on those services. (Time expired)