David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 and the related bill. Firstly, I want to recognise the government for their work in overhauling our aged-care system in line with recommendations from the royal commission. In particular, I want to recognise Minister Butler; the former Minister for Aged Care, Minister Wells; the hundreds of people at the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing; and all involved in the sector and at advocacy organisations for the delivery of these huge changes, the biggest in a generation.

It is mostly thankless work, but we should remember that the government, working with the Senate—and I'd like to acknowledge Senator Ruston and Senator Allman-Payne—delivered a rights based act and a fundamental rebalancing of the system to ensure people are given the ability to remain at home for as long as they would like. I supported the new Aged Care Act in the last parliament. I was grateful to work with both the government and the opposition at the time on a number of constructive amendments to the bill.

Change of this magnitude is obviously difficult. Clearly there were always going to be challenges in coordinating the delivery of care to hundreds of thousands of older Australians across a country as large as ours. However, when things do go wrong, I don't think it is too much to ask for our government to be upfront about what has happened and to work with the parliament, the sector and the community on solutions to those challenges. Clearly, something has gone wrong in the delivery of the new act—that's obvious because we're here today talking about an amendment that will switch on the act, after the act was supposed to be switched on on 1 July. I'm concerned that the government has not been honest about the reasons for this. I believe that older Australians have been left on the hook to pay for the mistakes that have been made.

I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about my understanding of the purpose of this bill, home-care packages and, most importantly, why the Senate should take action now to get some desperately needed care to people sitting on the government's waiting list. Before I get to the details, I want to read some stories that have been shared with me by people in my community about their experiences waiting for home care. It's easy to throw out the numbers, but every single number represents an Australian.

This is from Kelly:

My mum is 92. She had a stroke last year and is on a Level 2 package now. We get two hours of care per week, but our GP says we need at least three hours of care, five days a week. I work full time at a hospital myself. I lost $20,000 last year in income. I am the only child left to look after her. Seven falls since last July and rapid memory loss and confusion. My heart breaks each time I leave her to go to work as she looks like a lost child but I need to work. I am super tired, stressed & worried. Mum is declining & I am terrified I will lose her before help comes.

This from Belinda:

My 77 year old mother moved to Canberra this year—just as she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. Since diagnosis, we have been waiting on a reassessment, which MyAgedCare said would take 2-4 weeks. It has now been over three months.

The answering machine of the aged care assessment service says "don't leave a message, we're too busy to listen and reassessments are taking over 6 months.

In the meantime, my mother's mental and physical health are declining rapidly and my sister and I are struggling to support her while also working.

This is from Hilary:

We have been waiting for a review assessment to increase care to a higher package for my 91 year old mother-in-law since it was requested in February 2024—

February last year—

She lives alone and is becoming increasingly frail and has worsening dementia. It's becoming unsafe and is causing increasing strain and stress on the family trying to support her.

This is from Jacqui:

For 14 years I've cared for Mum who is 94, blind and frail. I have now been diagnosed with cancer. We have been waiting for 10 months for a Level 3 package, medium priority. Nothing speeds it up—not my struggle with cancer, nor her three falls that led to hospitalisation.

This is from Kelly:

My father was granted a Level 3 home care package in November 2024.

We waited over 6 months for him to be assessed in the first place so after more than a year and a half, he is still waiting for assistance.

He has Alzheimers and has regular falls at home.

We have started looking at Nursing Homes in his area as I really don't know how much longer he can stay at home without assistance. This is incredibly frustrating and makes me really angry when these packages are meant to assist people to stay in their homes but they are not being provided.

Every single one of those numbers being thrown around is a person and a family that is affected, like the Canberrans who have written to me about their situation. They just don't square with some of the talking points we've heard from the minister about 2,000 packages being released every week. Those are recycled packages. Those are people who are either dying or going into aged care. They talk about everyone who's a high priority being seen very quickly. We know just how hard it is to actually be classified as high priority when you have people who are at medium priority and their primary caregiver has cancer themselves.

We know that 87,000 people are on the waitlist now. On Friday, officers at the department not once but twice said that they would tell the Senate yesterday how many people were waiting in June 2025. That hasn't happened. To our earlier debate about the way that the Labor government is treating the Senate, I have grave concerns about the level of secrecy and the withholding of information the Senate asks for and the Senate even demands and moves motions to compel the government to release.

The other thing we found out on Friday was that there are 120,000 people waiting for an assessment. That's 120,000 people on the waiting list to get on to the waitlist. Clearly, this is a huge challenge that we are facing. So in June I wrote to the government, alongside other crossbench senators and MPs, asking for the government to release 20,000 home-care packages. Everything that the minister has said about the reasons why the government can't do that have been debunked by experts; by the sector, who say they have more capacity than 20,000 right now; and by the department, who themselves said that there is nothing stopping the government from releasing 20,000 packages. They even told me that they have actually modelled what it would cost to release 20,000 packages now. This is a decision of government to delay the release of any additional home-care packages until 1 November, when they get rebranded as Support at Home.

I join my colleagues in the Senate in saying that I won't be delaying the bill. I'm glad we finally got to it. This clearly needs to pass for Support at Home to commence in November, but the Senate does have a right to make really sensible amendments. I foreshadow that I'll be moving an amendment that would see the release of 20,000 new home-care packages. We all know it can be done. The department has said as much. We know that they can be provided. Providers have said publicly that they have capacity, and we know that there is need. This is urgent. This is the opportunity for the government to change the lives of 20,000 older Australians and, in most cases, change the lives of their families. I urge the government: this is an opportunity to do the right thing, to do the thing that the evidence suggests we need to do leading up to 1 November and to do the thing that is in the best interests of older Australians. You'll have an opportunity when other senators and I move amendments to the main bill.