Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today we are debating a bill that will have profound impacts on many in our community—the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill will make technical, transitional and consequential changes to support the commencement of the Aged Care Act from 1 November 2025. In speaking this morning, I would first like to commend my wonderful colleague Senator Allman-Payne, as the holder of the Greens' older Australians portfolio, and her incredible team for their work on this bill. I echo the contributions made by Senator Allman-Payne in the debate to this point.

As with the last aged-care bill, it would be remiss of me not to raise concerns around the rather rushed legislative process of this government. The Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill, for example, allowed only one week for submissions. For individuals and volunteer groups, one week is a very short period of time to give feedback on a bill that will have a profound impact on the lives of so many people. To me, it is deeply disappointing that the limited time for scrutiny in the inquiry has left much still unknown. It is clear that this government is not really any more committed to proper scrutiny of legislation in this term of parliament than it was in the last.

That said, the Greens do welcome some parts of this bill that seek to address community concerns, including providing more flexibility for people to access cleaning and gardening services by removing the ability for the rules to set caps on such services—rather wild that that even had to be done in the first place, but there you go. Many aspects of this bill also make technical changes to the Aged Care Act 2024 that are necessary to strengthen the proper functioning of Australia's new aged-care system.

However, the Greens hold some concerns, which I will step through now. It is clear that the bill was made with the interests of aged-care providers in mind, rather than those older people in desperate need of quality care. Instead of ensuring that people in aged care are not facing unreasonable costs, this bill seemingly makes it easier for aged-care providers to charge unnecessary fees and to add surprise charges. That prompts me to ask the question of why this government is enabling the fleecing of older people. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended a new aged-care act. Particularly, it recommended that that act should 'have the rights of older people at the very centre', and the Australian Greens do not believe that this has been fully realised in this bill.

Let me turn for a moment to the issue of young people in nursing homes. One aspect of this bill that is of deep interest to the community is how it chooses to prevent disabled people under the age of 65 from entering residential aged care. For years, young disabled people have been forced to move into aged care because there was nowhere else for them to live. Today, with the NDIS and specialist disability accommodation, there are more-appropriate homes for people who are disabled. But there are still young people moving into aged care right now. Let me emphasise that: we have the solution to the totally unacceptable situation where a young person is forced to live in a residential aged-care facility, yet we continue to see this precise thing happen.

The reason young people have had to enter residential aged care is that disability and health services do not work together, let alone in a timely way. Simply put, the government refuses to provide them with the disability support they actually need. Last year, when the Aged Care Bill was before the Senate, I shared my concern regarding the loophole in the bill that still allowed people under the age of 65 to enter residential aged care. The government did not take the opportunity to close that loophole, and they have failed to close it again with this legislation here before the Senate.

What I don't understand is that this government talks big—we've had promise after promise; in fact, on their website they state, 'We are working to stop younger people under the age of 65 from going into residential aged care'—yet, when it is time to put pen to paper and amend the legislation, this government leaves the loophole wide open. This is an utterly shameful act by a Labor government, and it has real-world consequences. As of March this year there are still 959 people under the age of 65 in residential aged care.

We need the government to stop this talk-without-action approach. We need this government to get itself together, to take a whole-of-government approach, to once and for all put its money where its mouth is and champion the rights of young disabled people. This government needs to work in good faith with disabled people and with their advocates to ensure that disabled young people do not continue to end up in residential aged care, because the government has a responsibility to these citizens to ensure that the policies of this nation support their human rights. We cannot continue to have a situation where people fall through the cracks, slip through the safety nets and end up in residential aged care as young people. That is not right.

I thought I'd share some words of a young person who has lived in residential aged care: 'Nursing homes for young people take away your self-respect and leave you where you can't make a decision. You are stripped of dignity.' Think of that, being stripped of dignity and agency because the safety net let them fall through. Another person who lived in residential aged care for over seven years shared their experience, which they described as, 'It's like being sentenced.' For them, it felt like jail.

When someone is in residential aged care, they are not living amongst their peers. They cannot access a NDIS plan, nor can they access the support that comes with it. They are provided with the same support as an older person, and that may not meet their individual needs. It is unacceptable that disabled people continue to fall through these cracks. The government cannot claim it does not know because, my Lord, there have been enough Senate inquiries, investigations and royal commissions that have found this exact dynamic, have called out exactly these loopholes and have flagged again and again that this is an issue. But because these young disabled people are structurally out of sight, they are apparently out of the mind of this Labor government. They are not out of the minds of the Greens. Those 959 people are on the minds of the Greens, and on my mind, every single day. It is disgusting that, through a lack of intellectual engagement with the potential flow-through impacts of its legislation, the government have allowed this loophole to continue. It is completely unacceptable.

While we are discussing the bills, I remark on how unacceptable it is that the NDIS still has an age limit of 65. Currently, once someone turns 65 they are no longer eligible to apply for NDIS support, even if they have had types of disability support before then. Many disabled people who are over the age of 65 would benefit massively from the NDIS. Right now, many Australians with significant disabilities are forced into the My Aged Care system, which is ill-suited to meet their needs and often requires them to sacrifice their independence. The Bonyhady and Paul review of the NDIS recommended that this be changed, yet what have we heard from this government? Crickets. The government should work to ensure that the NDIS is available for all people who need it regardless of their age. To do any less is discriminatory.

There are so many issues present in these bills—bills that will affect the lives of millions of Australians. The Greens once again urge the government to work in good faith with older people and their advocates to address these issues. I foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name and a second reading amendment in the name of Senator Allman-Payne.

In the eight years that the people of Western Australia have seen fit to send me to the Senate, there are certain issues that have come up again and again. In certain topics of inquiry that we see different MPs take on, the evidence is gathered, the submitters give evidence and the reports are created and delivered to government, yet there is a failure of action. This is always to me and always to the community a deeply frustrating dynamic to witness play out, but where it gets me most and where it gets people in the community most, where it elicits that deep anger, is when there are policy areas where there are changes needed, and where the solutions are known across the chamber, yet nothing changes. It doesn't matter which colour the Prime Minister is—red team or blue team—nothing changes. This is one of them.

Young people in nursing homes in Australia is something that has been spoken about in this place since the moment I arrived. Governments have made statements, ministers have issued press releases, patting themselves on the back as the numbers have gone down, committing to action when the number goes up, and yet here we are in 2025 and 959 young disabled people are still living in residential aged care. I ask anyone under the age of 65 in this parliament: Would you like that? Would you like to be in residential aged care under the age of 65? They're not there because there wasn't an alternative program, somewhere that could give them individualised support. No. They are there because nobody in the positions of power, paid for by the public purse, can be bothered to get to work on what they perceive as a 'complex, niche issue'. Do you know what? It's not that complicated, actually, if you sit down and read the reports.

These are people who are within institutional settings. They've been placed there because government services failed to stop them falling into those settings or placed them there in the first place many years ago. Those people in those settings often become institutionalised. So what is needed to support them to move out of those settings of institutionalisation is in-reach work of deinstitutionalisation. It's programs of deinstitutionalisation. It's not complicated. There are global examples and national examples of what deinstitutionalisation in-reach work looks like. You sit down with somebody, you take the time, you make the plan and you support them to move. We can do this. Morally, we must do this. We can't be here for another decade and still have the better part of 1,000 people in institutions where they should never have been in the first place. (Time expired)