Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Ageing, Senator Santoro. Will the minister update the Senate on the progress of the Howard government’s policy of conducting spot checks on aged-care homes?

Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Adams for her question and commend her on her regular and very constructive representations on behalf of the aged-care industry of her state and of Australia generally. Earlier this year the Howard government made a commitment to conduct at least one random spot check in each aged-care home every year. This was backed up in this year’s budget with an additional $8.6 million of new funding to boost the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency.

Figures supplied to me late last week by the agency indicate that we are well on track to deliver on that commitment. In the first quarter of this financial year, the agency undertook a total of 1,561 visits to aged-care homes. This figure included 382 spot checks. Last week the agency advised the Senate estimates committee that accreditation activity in the September quarter was dominated by the need to conduct the full-site audits associated with the accreditation round. These visits could normally take anything up to three days to complete and cannot, by their nature, be unannounced checks. The agency further advised the estimates committee that its activities for the rest of this year will be increasingly devoted to the government’s new program of annual spot checks.

A letter that I received late last week from the agency’s director, Mark Brandon, indicated that 379—I repeat: 379—spot checks had been undertaken during October this year. This level of activity—379 spot checks in a single month—indicates the agency is on track to achieve the target of one check for each of Australia’s 3,000 aged-care homes this financial year. I wish to congratulate the agency for their exceptionally good work and for the way that they have gone about implementing that deliberate government policy.

Last month the Labor Party attempted to score some cheap political points by attempting to insert a requirement for one spot check each year into some completely unrelated legislation—and honourable senators, I am sure, will remember that.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was just a stunt.

Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take the interjection from Senator Abetz, because it was a stunt. We the government voted against that stunt because the Labor Party amendment was poorly thought out and entirely inappropriate for what was essentially legislation governing means testing for aged care. Labor, predictably, issued a media release falsely claiming the government was opposed to the idea of one spot check a year. In the media release they stated that we were opposed to one spot check per home per year. As the figures that I have just outlined indicate, not only are we committed to the idea—and, by the way, it was our idea in the first place—we are actually doing it. Not only that, we have also funded—and we are getting on with the job of—one spot check for each of the 3,000 nursing homes in Australia per year.

While the Labor Party plays cheap politics over the security and quality of aged care, the Howard government is delivering for older Australians. I remind the Senate that this is only one of a range of measures that we have funded to the tune of $100 million of new money to help protect the aged and the frail within the government funding for nursing homes within Australia.