Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a relatively brief contribution today on the Aged Care Amendment (Implementing Care Reform) Bill 2022. Senator Ruston has outlined the coalition's position on this bill. I foreshadow that I will be moving a second reading amendment. Senator Ruston did describe it in part, but I will also talk through it.

I just want to pick up some of the comments from Senator Rice. I have no doubt about her commitment in this space, but the challenges facing particularly smaller rural and regional providers are so fundamental. I've visited so many providers with relatively low numbers of people in their care. They are just struggling. The number in the centres varies, but there can be as few as eight. But centres in regional areas with numbers in the 20s and 30s are struggling in a very fundamental way. They find it extraordinarily difficult to find staff. When they can find staff they are often poaching them from the local GP or the local hospital. So placing a new requirement on these small rural and regional centres has the potential for centres to reconsider their operation. This is why the opposition is so keen to see the regulations that underpin the vast bulk of the changes embodied through this legislation.

Centres are struggling at the moment. In so many country towns in WA they can't even find a house for health professionals, let alone find the actual professionals. In towns up north in WA that I visited recently nurses are working on fly-in fly-out rosters. They can't attract nurses to live permanently in those towns. The challenges are manifest. That is why the exemption clauses in the subordinate legislation are so important. That's why the coalition are so keen on seeing those clauses prior to this legislation being implemented. As I've said, we would like to see a copy of those draft recommendations to parliament as soon as practical. That is what would allow us to be certain that those smaller rural and regional centres in particular are not going to be adversely impacted.

I think it's important to note that our nursing community have worked tirelessly over the last few years. The pandemic has been an extreme challenge particularly for aged-care providers and right across the healthcare sector obviously. The support that nurses have provided to older Australians in aged-care homes has been absolutely outstanding. Nurses stood up when it mattered most to protect our older Australians. We know, having gone through those times, that we will always—and I know this place on many occasions did so—state our gratitude to the work of nurses in particular as well as all health professionals.

In responding to the aged-care royal commission in this bill, we are seeing a time frame that isn't consistent with the royal commission's final report and something that does potentially have some negative impacts, particularly on those rural and regional providers I spoke about earlier. I will now end my remarks there, and I will formally move my second reading amendment.