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

Right now, older people in Australia are dying while they are waiting to access a home-care package. Labor promised that, on 1 July, it was going to release more home-care packages to tackle the home-care waitlist. Right now, there are 87,000 older Australians who do not have access to care in their homes. That means they don't have access to care to help them shower. They don't have access to care to help them with medications. They don't have access to care to help them make sure they're eating properly. They don't have access to care to make sure that their homes are safe for them and clean.

By 1 November, it is estimated that there will be 100,000 people waiting for a home-care package. That doesn't just mean that those older people aren't getting the care they need; it means we're seeing older people being admitted to hospital. We know our hospitals are telling us they have hundreds of beds that are blocked because old people who need care at home can't get it and they're clogging up our hospital system. That's a false economy. We know that there are older people who want to stay in their homes if they have the care that they need to do that who are going into residential aged care earlier because they can't get the home-care package that they need. We know that it's taking up to 12 months—and even 18 months—for people who have been assessed as needing care to wait to get that care. That should not be happening in a wealthy country like this. Older people have spent their lifetimes contributing to our communities, and they should be able to expect that, when they need care, they can get it at the time that they need it.

Labor promised older people that on 1 July they would start releasing more home-care packages to start clearing the home-care waitlist. The Greens have been calling on the government since last year, when the aged-care reform legislation came into the parliament, to clear the home-care package backlog. Tomorrow, I'll be chairing a Senate inquiry into the transition to the new Aged Care Act, and already a read of the submissions tells us that providers, advocates, older people and their families are all calling on the government to release more home-care packages, and urgently. Providers were gearing up for those packages to be released on 1 July. They were employing people. They were getting themselves ready to do it, and then the government said, 'Hit pause.' And, whilst the government might have had other reasons for pausing some of the rollout of the new aged-care legislation, there was no need to pause the release of badly needed home-care packages, and providers, advocates and families are telling us exactly that.

Last week, I had a forum that was attended by over 50 older people and their families to listen to their stories of what it means for them not to have access to care. It means people getting sicker. It means people being trapped in their homes. It means people relying on the care of children and friends and other family, and that puts an unnecessary burden on them as well as denying older people the care that they deserve. The recent acting inspector has said that not providing care in a timely way amounts to a denial of care. Older people in this country deserve dignity in their old age, and they deserve more home-care packages so they can get the care that they need.