Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes that the Aged Care Act 2024 reforms introduced on 1 November 2025 will not address the unacceptable delays in accessing aged care services, insufficient home care packages, long wait times for assessments and will continue uncertainty for those accessing care.

The government promised once-in-a-generation reforms to the aged-care system. Instead, we continue to see unacceptable delays in accessing aged-care services, insufficient home-care packages, long wait times for assessments and continuing uncertainty for those who are accessing care.

Labor refuses to prioritise people needing care. Instead, they're prioritising corporate interests and expanding the privatisation of health care. The other week Minister Rae was bragging about the fact that providers' profits were increasing. People who are struggling to get care for their parents, grandparents or themselves don't want to hear about profits going up. Australians want to hear that people are receiving the care that they need when they need it. People also want to believe the minister when he makes these promises. There are insufficient home-care packages available not because of some market or a worker shortage but because Labor doesn't want to spend the money. They put a cap on the number of home-care packages, and now we have a waitlist that's a year long. There is no reason for this waitlist. It's been created by the decisions of the government, and it could be cleared by decisions of government.

The aged-care minister thinks that boosting care for profit is a good thing. Well, let me tell you what older Australians think instead. Linda told us:

my husband's neurodegenerative disease means he can't get out of bed by himself—he can't sit up, can't stand by himself, can't walk, can't dress himself…having a shower, shave and getting dressed is the one thing that helps him keep his dignity—

but—

the Government is now charging us $25,000 out of pocket for that basic necessity.

Linda shouldn't have to worry about the cost of assistance for her husband, but she does. We know that carers are already struggling. These new reforms have only added to this. Carers tell me that they're experiencing increasing worries about cost, facing uncertainty about the changes and struggling to figure out how to support their loved ones' care.

The introduction of co-payments will only add to the care burden. It will force carers to provide more for their parents, partners and loved ones. The alternative is to pay for these services, and we know that not everyone will be able to do so. We also know that this increased burden of care would disproportionately fall on women. Take Kaz, who knows how hard it is on families when older people can't access care. Kaz said:

As a woman in her 40s I've been caring for my 94 year old father who—

has lived—

with me for the last 6 years with advanced dementia. I can no longer work full time despite training as a health professional. The support just isn't there. I have massive carers fatigue And meanwhile these providers are lining their own pockets whilst the end user misses out.

Kaz sees through Labor and knows that they have chosen to prioritise corporate profits over care.

Last year, the Greens were the only ones that voted against the aged-care reform bill, because we objected to the financialisaton of care. We knew that it wouldn't help people that needed help, and that it would leave many more people worse off. It is obvious that many people in this chamber haven't had to worry about the cost of aged care for their parents. They haven't had to wait a year for their grandparents to be assigned a home-care package. They haven't had to make a decision about the number of hours that they work and being able to provide care for their loved ones, but, across the country, Australians have.

This aged-care act is forcing older people to pay more for their care and to miss out on services that they could previously afford. The minister promised people that, if they were already in the system, they'd be no worse off. But we are already hearing from people whose providers are putting up the cost of their care, and they are having to make decisions about whether they pay the rent or they can afford to have a shower every day. It is of no comfort to older people when the minister goes on radio and talks about the profits of aged-care providers. Care should never be for profit—not in aged care, not in disability care and not in child care.

Yet, time and time again, we see governments from both Labor and the coalition privatising care, which means that the interests of shareholders are placed above the needs of the people who need that care. We are a wealthy country. One in three big corporations paid no tax last year. Imagine if those big corporations were forced to pay their fair share so that our parents, our grandparents and our loved ones were not at the whim of an aged-care system being driven for shareholder profits and instead governments invested in the care that older people need.

During the pandemic, the aged-care facilities that managed to do the best job in looking after older people in a challenging time were government owned and run aged-care facilities. In our inquiries, we have heard that government run facilities have stable staff and put people on a career path. Government employers invest in their training and their professional development. They provide consistency of care. Yet we have a Labor government that has turbocharged coalition-era privatisation of aged care so that the focus of care is now profit. One of the aged-care advocacy groups has a post on social media this week telling people that it can show them how they can make $78,000 a year by getting into the aged-care system. They are blatantly out there telling people how they can make money off the care of older people. Privatisation of care services doesn't make sense. Why do we want shareholders to make profits when that money could be going into providing decent care for older people?

Older people are telling us they have worked their entire lives, paid taxes and contributed to our communities, and they thought that when they got to old age, when they needed governments to step in and look after them, they would be there. Well, waiting for over a year to get home care is not providing those people with the care that they need. It took an inquiry in the last sittings of the Senate to even uncover that there's a massive waitlist for the waitlist—100,000 people waiting for packages and another 120,000 people not waiting for packages but waiting for someone to come and assess them to get a package. We had a story on 7.30 this week highlighting again that people cannot get the care that they need. They can't get the assessments that they need. We had a system where clinicians assessed people to determine what care they needed—occupational therapists, healthcare workers. Now we've got a privatised assessment system where people who don't even understand the needs of the people they're assessing are ticking and flicking.

A person gets through that assessment process, having waited for it for months, and then they find out that they have to be assessed again, either because the assessment wasn't done right or because it's been so long since the assessment that their care needs have increased. I don't know about you, but, for most people over 80 that I know, six months is a really long time to wait for care. If you're in your 90s and you're having trouble showering, keeping your house clean and getting to medical appointments, being asked to wait six months to a year means that you're possibly going to die waiting for care. We know that last year 5,000 older people in this country died waiting to get access to care. We should be ashamed of that. We are a wealthy country. How is it that 5,000 older people died waiting to get the care that they need?

Care should never be for profit—not in aged care, not in child care and not in disability care. Along with my colleague Senator Steele-John in the disability portfolio and my colleague Senator Steph Hodgins-May in the childcare portfolio, I, wearing my hat as spokesperson for older people, want to tell the people of Australia that the Greens will continue to fight to make sure that care in this country—aged care, child care and disability care—will not be for profit.