Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Colbeck has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 15 of today's Order of Business:

Labor's inaction and broken promises have left more than 200,000 vulnerable older Australians and their families waiting for either a home care package or an assessment for a home care package, and under Labor's watch, older Australians are waiting triple the amount of time for support.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take great pleasure in introducing this MPI today, which highlights the failure and the broken promise of the government, particularly in relation to the provision of home-care packages that we are currently seeing in this country. This self-generated crisis in home care is purely and simply a function of this government's failure. Why do I say that? I say that because I've had a look at the numbers.

Obviously, in the previous coalition government, I had a bit to do with this area of the portfolio, and I'm quite proud of the effect that the investment the coalition made into home-care packages had on waiting times and the waiting list for senior Australians who were seeking a home-care package. Over the three years from 2019 to the 2022 election, the coalition inserted an additional 40,000 home-care packages each and every year into the home-care system. In response to the royal commission report that was handed down in March 2021, the coalition invested $17.1 billion, and over $7 billion went into those additional home-care packages.

The result of that investment was that the waiting time for a home-care package at any level in this country was reduced, from a very unacceptable level of over a year to 30 to 90 days. If the individual had been assessed as requiring a package at high need, before we got to the 2022 election we had achieved delivery of that home-care package in less than 30 days. There's the benchmark. The investment of the coalition had reduced the waiting time for a home-care package in this country to 30 to 90 days by 2022-23. And we reduced the waiting list—the number of people on the national priority list—from close to 129,000 people to less than 29,000 people. We took 100,000 people off the national priority list.

The scandal, the outrage and the complete disgrace that is the situation today is that, under this government, that achievement has been completely and utterly squandered. The waiting list now is at least 87,597, and we don't know the full extent of it because the government won't release the numbers. That's the waiting list as of March this year. And the waiting time is up to 15 months. So, from 30-90 days, the waiting time has blown out to up to 15 months for someone seeking a home-care package. That is not acceptable. It wasn't acceptable when it was that high under us. We worked hard, we invested, we made the changes and we put additional home-care packages into the system to reduce the waiting list down to less than 29,000 and the waiting time down to 30 to 90 days for a package at any level. It's just outrageous that this government has allowed it to blow out. It hasn't released new packages; it's recycling packages. It hasn't listed a new package since 1 July this year. The talking points for government senators will say that they're putting 2,100-odd packages into the system every week, but that's just somebody who's either dying or going into an aged-care facility and relinquishing their package for it to become available for someone else.

The government needs to make sure that there is enough capacity in the system to bring the waiting list down. We did that. The government needs to do that. It needs to be honest with the Australian people about the crisis that it has created itself, and it needs to keep its promise to put the care back into aged care, not just— (Time expired)

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about a topic close to my heart, and that is aged care. As you know, in my previous life I was a doctor working in a major public hospital. I wore two hats: one was as a general physician, and the other was as an infectious diseases specialist. As a general physician, which was actually the bulk of my work, I looked after a lot of elderly Australians. It was, in fact, probably the majority of my workload and my case mix. I saw every ailment and every problem under the sun, and one of the characteristics of all those frail elderly Australians who would come through the door and would be admitted into hospital was multimorbidity. They would have multiple comorbidities, one on top of another on top of another.

But it could be much worse than that. In some cases, these were elderly Australians who were coping or barely coping with social isolation. Some had been abandoned by their families; they were alienated from their families or estranged from them. Others were actually victims of a pretty silent scourge in our communities, and that is elder abuse—where an older Australian is exploited, usually by one of their children. This was a common occurrence, and we would often have to bring our hospital lawyers to deal with this.

But there was certainly a surge during the pandemic years. Senator Colbeck cited 2019 to 2022 and all the achievements of the former Morrison government, but that period, for me, was spent on the frontline in the hospital in PPE caring for a whole string of elderly Australians who were flooding through the doors. Many were gasping for air. Others were delirious. Some had had falls. Some experienced all three of those things together. What I noticed during that time was a complete collapse of the aged-care system, such that we had hospitals that were getting overwhelmed with frail elderly people and we had a workforce that was utterly decimated during that period, burnt out and leaving the sector. Is it any wonder that we are now trying to clean up the mess, a legacy that was born from chronic underinvestment in aged care over the previous decade of Liberal stewardship and then made worse by the pressure test that was COVID?

In fact, the first piece of legislation we passed as a government in 2022 was not actually about climate change; that was the second one. It was on aged care. We had to bring on this emergency legislation in order to rescue the sector. What we've seen since is, in fact, a huge uplift in the workforce. We've poured $18 billion into the aged-care workforce, and it always starts with the workforce. In care, it always starts with the workforce. The workforce is everything. They are the ones who provide the care. It is called 'aged care' for a reason. It's not infrastructure and all of that; it is the workforce. So we brought in $18 billion and basically increased the wages of this important, mission-critical workforce, such that registered nurses are now $430 a week better off and carers are $320 a week better off.

But that wasn't all. We also brought in 24/7 nursing, and that's present now in 99 per cent of aged-care sites. Having a nurse on site actually means that you get far less egress of patients into hospital because nurses on site can manage medical issues. They can seek advice. They can dispense medication. They can also palliate patients in residential aged-care facilities. This has, in effect, lifted the confidence of Australians again in residential aged care.

The next piece of reform that is going to start on 1 November is a whole new generational change, which looks at how we better support Australians at home and how we put their wishes and preferences at the centre of everything we do. That is something that was missing in the previous aged-care act, so there'll be a whole new act that kicks off on 1 November. It has been passed thanks to the bipartisan approach we have taken with the coalition, and a key part of the act is Support at Home. Support at Home will come with the injection of 83,000 new packages into the system. That is designed to enable more Australians to have autonomy and remain at home, which is entirely aligned with their own wishes.

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

Right now, people are dying while they wait for aged care. At the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry on Friday, we learned four things. One thing was that the waitlist for people who are waiting for home-care packages is not 87,000 people; it's well over 200,000. That is 200,000 older Australians in this country who cannot get the care that they need at the time that they need it. The second thing we heard was that, categorically, providers are ready, willing and able to roll out more home-care packages now—not in four months, but now.

The third thing was that we were told by the department that there is no technical reason or impediment to the government rolling out home-care packages as of 1 July rather than delaying it by four months to 1 November. In the department's words, 'The only reason they're not being rolled out is a decision of the minister.' And the fourth thing that we learned was that the 2,700 packages that the minister said are being released each week are not new packages. They are packages that get re-allocated when somebody who has one dies or goes into residential aged care. Not one single home-care package has been released since 1 July.

The minister has said, 'Four months isn't too long to wait.' Well, we heard at the inquiry that four months for an older person who requires care at home is catastrophic. It means earlier hospital admissions. It means rapid decline. And it means being pushed into residential aged-care facilities sooner, unless you are one of the people dying while waiting for care. Shame on this government. There's no reason not to release home-care packages now, yet you are asking older Australians in this country to wait. Families are being told that the fastest route to get care is to admit their older parent or their grandparent to hospital. Again, shame on this government. The only thing standing between older people and the care that they need is the minister and this Labor government.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Allman-Payne, for your words and for your work on the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs and on the aged-care inquiries, both in this parliamentary term and previously. I sit here shaking my head while listening to the speakers not just now but also during question time and taking note of answers. I don't know what more we need to say and do or how much more loudly we need to speak to make it very, very clear that there is a crisis in relation to this issue in this country. And, if the government would like to pretend that there is no problem here and that there is nothing to see here, then I would suggest that they have a reality check. I think one of the comments in the chamber earlier today was that there was a conflation about this problem. There is no conflation. This is real. There are some 200,000 elderly Australians waiting to either be assessed or be assigned a home-care package, and that is entirely unacceptable. The waiting time from end to end for some of these people is almost two years. They point and say—I think these were the words from Senator Ananda-Rajah; I wrote them down—'We had to rescue the sector.'

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We did!

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So rescuing the sector means making people wait for two years? Senator Polley, I listened to you and you got to speak in silence. I think I deserve the same respect.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind senators that interjections are disorderly.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

More than 200,000 older Australians are waiting for access to these packages, and I don't find it funny. My elderly mother is one of them. She's 91 years old. In November 2023, we made the request for a review of her package. We followed up in March 2024. We were told it would be a six- to nine-month wait. She was approved on 10 December 2024 for an upgrade from a level 1 to a level 4 because she had gone from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. Guess what? We're still waiting. I actually rang them this morning, just to find out where she was up to. The waiting time is no longer six to nine months. It is now nine to 12 months. She's not alone. She's one of 200,000 elderly Australians that are waiting for this government to do something.

They dare to stand in this chamber and tell us that they're releasing packages every single week when we know that they have not released one single new package since 1 July. They should be deeply ashamed of that. These are people who have worked hard their whole lives. These are people who have raised families. These are people who have contributed to our society. And, now, when they are at a vulnerable time in their lives and they need our assistance and support, we are letting them down. Not only are they being let down; the reality of what they are living through is being obfuscated about by this government, pretending that it's not real. Well, it is absolutely real for every single one of those 200,000 people.

Whilst I wasn't at the inquiry on Friday, I have heard those stories as well. Imagine being offered a place when your beloved husband, wife, mum, dad or other family member has just passed away or when it's far too late? That's not right. We should be ashamed of that. Every single one of us in this place is responsible and accountable for that, but the government has the carriage of it.

As has been noted many times, the aged care bill was something that we worked with the government on. It was bipartisan and we should all be proud of that because we're trying to get the outcome. But we've can't hide from the fact that we are not delivering the packages. This government is not delivering the packages that Australians need. This is an aged-care crisis entirely created by the actions of this government. The Prime Minister promised security, dignity, quality and humanity being placed back into aged care. None of that has happened. People have had to wait longer and longer. That is an absolute shame. The Prime Minister has failed older Australians who need support so they can live with dignity in their own homes. (Time expired)

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The truth is that, when Labor came into government, we inherited an aged-care system that was in crisis. If you're talking about a crisis that people are experiencing, yes, there's still a lot more to be done. To say the government doesn't recognise that there's more to be done is untruthful. This is because of the crisis that we inherited from those opposite, who were in government for nine years. I didn't see any tears from the Greens during that time, attacking the Liberal coalition government then, because now they're good buddies. What did we see? We saw a failed government who were so bad in this sector that they had to call a royal commission into their own failings.

So, when the Albanese Labor government came into office, the aged-care sector, as I said, had been underfunded for a decade and was overstretched and plagued by long waiting lists. Families were anxious, workers were leaving the sector and older Australians were simply not getting the care that they needed. Now, they knew during that period of time, because they had five—five—failed aged-care ministers, and not one of them was really interested in the portfolio that they had. And, although we've had a contribution by Senator Colbeck from the other side, I think it's really interesting that he is actually paying more attention to this portfolio now than when he was the minister for aged care, because he put sporting events over older Australians during a time of absolute crisis. This was the Liberal government under which there was a royal commission and the title of its report was Neglect. That's when this country had an aged-care crisis. So let's be quite truthful.

Now of course we would like to deliver more home-care packages faster. What we have done is to invest in the workforce—something that they neglected. And still, when we put that legislation through this parliament, they didn't support it. So the crocodile tears don't work—not in this chamber, where people on this side have been advocating for and supporting this sector, because of older Australians and what they've contributed to their country and also because we've had parents and relatives go through the system. But what we have to do is be truthful. Just coming along and working on one piece of legislation doesn't mean you're an expert and that nothing happened when you were in government. We will not allow you to get away with that.

Right now, there are 2,000 new packages being allocated every single week, and, for every older Australian who is assessed as high priority, the wait time is just one month. From 1 November, when the Support at Home program begins, we will make available 83,000 new home-care places in the very first year. That's a major expansion in services—not the neglect of Senator Colbeck and that government.

Now, the Albanese government acknowledges, as I said, that wait times for aged-care assessments are longer than we would like, and we don't shy away from that. But the system is complex, and it's changing for the better. The royal commission called for one single streamlined assessment process for older Australians, so that they don't have to go through repeated assessments as their needs evolve. Labor is delivering that reform. Last year, more than 521,000 assessments were completed, and wait times are already falling. The median time for an assessment was 30 days in the June quarter and dropped to 25 days in July. That is progress in the right direction.

The government wants a system that cares for senior Australians, and it wants workers who are there because they want to be there and are being paid an appropriate wage. So to those who want to bring motions like this before the chamber, where they want to rewrite history, I say: bring it on, because the truth is there in the figures. People, unfortunately, have always died waiting for aged-care packages and, unfortunately, even waiting to get into residential care. But don't use those people for your political games, which is what you're trying to do now. We know, and so do the Australian people, that the system was broken under the Liberal coalition—that's the fact. Otherwise, why did you call a royal commission into your own failings? Because you knew you had failed older Australians and they— (Time expired)

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many on the Liberal side, Senator Colbeck is quick to point the finger on inaction, broken promises and vulnerable older Australians being left in the lurch. What's surprising is that it's true, but it's not just Labor. We had workforce shortages before Labor. We had an ageing population before Labor. We had growing rates of chronic illness before Labor. We certainly had budget pressures before Labor. What we didn't have before Labor was a home-care package waitlist of over 100,000. We had a waitlist of 20,000. Such an increase is a huge failure. What's worse is deliberately withholding the rollout of 83,000 packages when you already have over 100,000 on the waitlist. These people are on average waiting at least six months and up to 15 months. That's over a year of extra stress on the individual and their family. Tasmania's got the oldest population in the country, so what happens in aged care hits us hardest and hits us first.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended that we should implement continuous reforms and ensure equitable access to aged care. Since then, to be fair to Labor, some good steps have been taken in our aged-care industry—better pay for carers and revamps of outdated care homes; all good things. But Tasmania has the greatest need for community-care packages and is the hardest hit by a government deliberately withholding them. The oldest, poorest, sickest state is the one that feels the greatest pain by a government induced shortage. We are the ones who pay. We need to streamline the assessment process and ensure the effective rollout of aged-care packages to all Australians. No-one should have to wait 15 months for a hand.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is overseeing an aged-care crisis created entirely by its own actions. Anthony Albanese promised to put security, dignity, quality and humanity back into aged care. In March 2021, before he took power, he said, 'We cannot be satisfied with the situation where older Australians are dying while they're waiting for their home-care places.' But the Prime Minister has failed Australians on his watch. The worst part is that Anthony Albanese promised Australians 83,000 new home-care places from 1 July—

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McAllister?

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn't intervene on the first occasion, but if Senator Ruston could refer to the Prime Minister by his proper title that would be appreciated.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind Senator Ruston to use the proper titles of members and senators.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister promised to deliver 83,000 new home-care packages from 1 July 2025, yet not a single package has been released in this financial year by the government. That's because the government backflipped on its promise immediately following the election.

What's most concerning is the government is refusing to admit the real reason it has delayed the release of these essential packages. The minister keeps saying the sector weren't ready. However, peak bodies, providers and advocacy groups unanimously told the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry last Friday that the sector is absolutely ready to stand by to provide that new care now. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and Services Australia both confirmed that there are no barriers to packages being released now except for the decision by the minister not to do so. So the department is ready and the sector is ready, but this government continues to withhold critical aged-care packages and places without any reasonable excuse at all. Why will the government not admit that the only thing standing in the way of older Australians accessing the care that they have been assessed by this government as needing is themselves? They are actively withholding this critical support from Australians who desperately need it, and the government must be condemned for this action. They must be held to account for the waitlist crisis that is before us.

Today we heard from the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, who blamed everybody but himself and the government for the crisis that has befallen our aged-care sector—a crisis that has worsened over the last two years, particularly with over 200,000 people that we know of in limbo waiting for care. He blamed the sector. He blamed his own department. He blamed the coalition. He even blamed his own reforms as the reason he hadn't released these packages. This is tantamount to the states and territories doing a hospital reform process and not admitting any new patients into the hospital until the reforms are in place, or emergency departments around the country being closed down for a few weeks while they do a refurbishment. This is completely and utterly ridiculous. The only reason Australians are being denied the care they need to stay in their own homes is the minister has made an active decision not to release home-care packages.

The other thing that is really concerning as we stand here today is that for some months now I, Senator Allman-Payne, Senator Pocock and a number of other senators have been trying to get information about what the waiting list currently is. The last piece of information we were given was that 87,000-plus people were on the priority list waiting for homecare packages that they had been assessed as needing—as I said, on 31 March. In previous practice, the government has always provided that information immediately in the following month. So, the information for July should be available by now. We haven't had any information for April, none for May, none for June and none for July. We want to know why the government is withholding this information. We asked for it on Friday. They said they'd give it to us yesterday. They did not provide that information.

The cynic would suggest that the government is not providing that information because they simply do not want to admit to Australia that the waitlist crisis—not just the number of people on the waitlist but the length of time they are waiting—has blown out to the extent that it is likely to be the worst waitlist and the worst wait times in the history of aged care in this country.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has now expired.