Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022

28 July 2022

I also rise today to make a contribution to the debate on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022. But, before I do, this is my first opportunity to acknowledge our new President, Senator Lines. I want to congratulate you on your appointment. I think it is a historic moment for our party and for our chamber and I know we are in very good hands with your leadership and stewardship of this very important institution of the Senate.

This is the first piece of legislation I get an opportunity to speak on in the 47th parliament, and I am so pleased that the first piece of legislation we are considering is on aged care. I think aged care would be one of the issues I spoke most about during the 46th Parliament because during that time we were confronted with the absolute worst of what happens when an entire part of our carer economy in aged care is left in neglect, and a crisis rained down upon it. The pandemic was horrific for aged care. Still there are many, many challenges in the sector as a result of the pandemic. But it was made worse than it needed to be because of the neglect that predated that crisis, the neglect that has existed within the sector for many, many years—ignored, not dealt with, not addressed. This is our first opportunity to deal with a piece of legislation in this chamber, and thank goodness we are dealing with aged care.

This bill is, of course, just the first step in our government's work to fix the aged-care crisis. We know that that fix won't happen overnight, and of course not everything in this crisis can be fixed by one piece of legislation. This is a sector that has suffered neglect for years and was downright failed by our previous government. But this bill—and the fact that it's the first piece of legislation that we are debating here—is a really important start. I want to commend Anika Wells, the member for Lilley, for her tireless work, since she was sworn in as our new Minister for Aged Care, to make sure that she could bring this bill to the parliament, that it was treated with the urgency that it deserves. I wish that minister every success in what I know is her genuine and dedicated focus on fixing the aged-care crisis.

This bill contains a number of important measures. It seeks to implement a new Australian National Aged Care Classification funding model, replacing the outdated Aged Care Funding Instrument, offering more equitable funding, better matched to providers' costs in delivering the care residents need. There will be a new star-rating system that will see the Department of Health and Aged Care publish a comparison rating for all residential aged-care services by the end of 2022. There will be an extension to the Serious Incident Response Scheme to all in-home care providers to increase protection for older Australians from preventable incidents, abuse and neglect. The bill establishes a new code of conduct for approved providers, their workforce and governing persons, setting minimum standards of behaviour. The bill implements new provider governance and reporting arrangements to improve transparency and accountability and it will improve information sharing between the aged-care, disability support and veterans care sectors, to harmonise the regulation of care. This bill, at its core, is about restoring dignity, care, accountability and humanity back into aged care, and this is where we must start. This is where we rightfully start.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's interim report was called Neglect. It found that the Australian aged-care system had failed to meet the needs of its older and vulnerable citizens. It found that the system didn't deliver uniformly safe and quality care and that there was unkindness, a lack of caring, towards older people and, in too many instances, neglect of our older Australians. It found systemic problems in the aged-care system that require urgent fundamental reform and redesign. The final report, which gave the recommendations that this bill is based on and seeks to start addressing and implementing, stated that the aged-care system has been under prolonged stress and has reached crisis point. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic only extended that. It made things worse. It added an unprecedented pressure to a system already buckling under strain. Aged care was in crisis. It still is in crisis. It was a poor system before the pandemic, with the pandemic only weakening it further.

Over the last decade, we've seen 23 reports, inquiries, studies, committee reports and then the royal commission. The story never changed. It's not like one of these reports was the standout moment where we said, 'Oh gosh, there's a problem here.' All of these reports told us the same thing. All of these reports were pointing to the crisis unfolding before us, a crisis which we have seen amplified and worsened over recent years.

I am so proud to be part of a government not afraid to confront this crisis head-on. I sat in this chamber many times during the 46th Parliament as we had debates around wording and semantics, with the government defending the use of particular words—not debates on the substance of what was happening in aged care, not debates on substantive pieces of legislation that the government was bringing before this chamber which would enable us to get the big process of reform started, but political debates. Like so many things in the Morrison government, aged care was turned into a political football. It was about defending their failures, deflecting from their failures, rather than getting to the work which needed to be done. I don't pretend the work ahead is easy; I don't think anyone in this chamber would pretend that the work is easy. It's going to be really hard to fix this crisis. But I hope we can all agree that it matters, that it's urgent, and I hope—in the Prime Minister's spirit of a better parliament—we can work together to get this done.

This matters for South Australians, for my constituents, for the people I represent—South Australians like Noleen Hausler, who has been fighting for reform since 2015 when a camera she had hidden in her father's aged-care facility revealed horrific abuse. It was a sight no daughter should ever have to see of her beloved father. In her evidence to the royal commission Noleen spoke of her shock when she saw the visual images—her heart racing, her hands shaking. What a dreadful thing. What a dreadful thing to witness of someone you love. For Noleen, for everyone who gave evidence to that royal commission, I am sure there would have been hope at the end—hope that, by giving that evidence, by sharing those painful stories, that fear and that sadness of what happened to the people they loved, change would come. And the slowness of that change has failed them. It's let them down. They bravely told their stories and they've been let down.

Of course, this South Australian family wasn't alone. We heard countless stories which would shake any reasonable person to their core. We heard from carers who told of the pressure they felt to spend little time with their residents, choosing between supporting residents most at risk, leaving some residents behind who they wanted to give care to but couldn't—ad hoc care, staff at breaking point and stretched to the limit, residents and families who felt abandoned and let down by the places they entrusted to care for people they loved. What a heartbreaking thing. You send the person you love into care, hoping that that's what they will receive, and instead of care, instead of compassion and kindness, your loved one gets failed in the most horrific way.

So many South Australians have been let down by a system in crisis, a system reeling under extreme strain. They're feeling this, I know. I speak to them all the time, not just the residents in aged care, who I've had the privilege to visit, but the workforce trying to support them and care for them—workers like Donna, an aged-care worker in Adelaide who absolutely loves her job. She loves the people she cares for. She loves the people she works with. But she's under an extraordinary amount of pressure because this system is in crisis.

I've spoken to another young aged-care worker in Adelaide who stumbled into aged care by accident and fell in love with the sector, fell in love with caring for people, fell in love with what the nurses were doing and how to show tenderness and kindness to people in need. She loved it so much that she's now studying health at university, wanting to give back in a healthcare setting. And she would love to go to aged care again, but she just cannot bring herself to do it because the conditions of her work and the strain that that sector is under mean she just doesn't feel like she's up to returning to that sector. This is a young person who could make a tremendous difference but whose contribution has been lost because the system has failed so many.

I spoke to workers in Adelaide East, just a few months ago, who were working really hard every day to support their residents but couldn't give them the attention they deserved. A nurse in regional South Australia spoke of the difficulty in accessing a RN, as there wasn't always one on site—something we're going to fix—and how that hurt when there wasn't that care for residents when they were in need. And I've heard from residents who love their support workers—the people in their clinics caring for them, providing entertainment for them, activities, cooking for them. They absolutely adore the workers in aged care. But who can see the struggle this workforce is under as well, who want relief for the people who care for them.

All of these South Australian stories stay with me every day—the stories of dedication and compassion, and the stories, sadly, of abuse and of neglect. They stay with me and they come in here, into this chamber, and they're the stories I think about when we debate legislation like this, and that's what this legislation is seeking to do—to put security, dignity, quality and humanity back into aged care, to do better by these South Australians. It builds on our broader plans for aged care, our serious plans for aged care. We made this a centre of our election commitments because we know how much it matters to every single Australian, not just those with loved ones in aged care.

If each of us is lucky enough to get old, many of us will find ourselves in aged care. Many of us will find ourselves making really difficult decisions about care for people we love. We need to fix this. We need to fix this urgently. Our policies will ensure qualified nurses are onsite 24 hours a day, seven days a week, increasing the pipeline of registered nurses into aged-care facilities and, importantly, helping clear so many unnecessary trips to emergency departments, a particular issue in regional areas. We want to see a real pay increase for workers, a boost in workforce numbers, more training places and university places to support and grow and build that workforce and, importantly, a mandated average of 215 minutes of care being given to those in aged care. These are really important measures. They are measures which will change the face of aged care.

This bill is a really important first step. It's not every step. We won't pass this piece of legislation and see a dramatic turnaround in what's happening in aged care. But the dedication of this government—the fact is that this is the first piece of legislation we are dealing with—I think, is testament to how seriously Minister Butler, Minister Wells and, of course, our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, take this crisis and their role in tackling it. That's something we didn't see in this parliament, and I don't think any of us could really, honestly reflect on the way aged care was treated in the last parliament with any sense of pride.

This is our moment to get the real piece of reform done: to do the hard work, the scary things, to not let people down, to not let down our elderly, our older Australians, who have done so much for our nation—who have built our nation—and are in aged care and need the support of this chamber, of this Senate and of our government. It's our opportunity to say to those workers who have been through so much, particularly during the pandemic: 'We value you and we're going to try to get this fixed.' This is about not letting down Australians—Australians who have been horrified by what's happening in aged care—many of whom, dare I say, feel scared about what their future looks like if we don't fix this crisis.

I am proud to be a part of this work and I am proud of my government for not being afraid to confront the enormity of it. I look forward to the support of this chamber. Let the 47th Parliament be better in the way it deals with aged care. Let us be the parliament that fixes this crisis and restores dignity, humanity and care to those Australians who so desperately need it.