Mr COULTON (Parkes—Chief Nationals Whip) (18:08): I rise to speak on this Aged Care Bill tonight. I understand we have an ageing population in this country. I speak as someone who is a baby boomer, I’ve got to admit—one of the younger baby boomers, but a baby boomer. We are the largest cohort of citizens in Australia, and we, the baby boomers, are rapidly heading to being in higher need. So there’s a need for this parliament to work through to improve legislation around aged care and how it’s managed. It is incredibly important. I would like to give credit to the government and Minister Wells and the coalition leadership team that agreed to work through this process and make some changes, particularly around regional funding. This issue is way above party politics. This is way above some of the issues that get debated in this place. There is a Senate inquiry happening, and, if it happens to identify issues that need to be fine-tuned or corrected, I’m certainly hopeful that the process is there to do that.

Fundamentally, with this large wave of Australian post-war babies that are coming through the system, there will be an enormous burden and pressure on this country—on the cost of funding that and on the workforce. By the time the baby boomers will need peak care, we’re going to go from three out of five Australians in the workforce back to two. So not only are we going to have a smaller income coming to the government through income tax; we’re also going to have a workforce issue.

It’s the workforce issue at the moment that is creating some problems in aged care in my electorate, but, before I go on to that, I might just touch on something else. I was regional health minister during the pandemic, and I believe one of the absolute scandals was the way the Australian media portrayed aged care during that time. They made elderly people fearful, so much so that people are only gaining back the confidence to go into that higher level of care. Quite frankly, we’ve seen people languishing at home, living in less-than-optimum circumstances because of this fear of going into aged care.

Clearly, there were deaths in aged care, as in the rest of society, but, to be quite frank, aged care now has moved somewhat in the last 30 years. Originally, a lot of facilities were built as hostel-type accommodation for reasonably active retirees to live in a communal space. Now, with more focus on home delivered aged care, aged care has transformed into basically high-level care and end-of-life care. So the people that are going into these facilities now are going in for a lesser period of time, but they’re also going into a space where they need a higher level of care. That people in aged care are actually dying at a higher rate than the rest of Australia is the bleeding obvious, quite frankly, but the scare campaign that went into that was very, very damaging to the industry.

Apart from scaring the elderly people, the degeneration to the staff that work in there—these are the salt of the earth, people that care for our elderly people. Years ago, it would have been the responsibility of the family, but, now, with people working in the workplace, we have put the care of our elderly into someone else’s hands. Those people are gems. They are dealing with people who are suffering from dementia, that are disorientated, that have become aggressive, that need high-level care. They do it, and in every town I visit I see these wonderful people. And, quite frankly, they were demoralised after the pandemic by the way they were treated by the media and the way aged care was portrayed. It has been difficult to get people to look at going back into that occupation. I acknowledge the government is paying more money for that. But, aside from the money, we need to make sure these people are emotionally rewarded and recognised for the work they do.

With the best of intentions, I suspect—and we see this a lot—people who live in larger centres and the city don’t understand regional aged care. The member for Riverina mentioned this. The need for registered nurses 24/7—while it’s a lofty ambition, I’m sure—has created an enormous issue for aged-care providers in regional Australia. I’ll give you an example. Southern Cross Care is the major provider in Broken Hill. I think they care for about 270 people when they’re at capacity. They struggle because they’re in competition with the Far West Local Health District, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and local medical practices for this very small cohort of people that have skills in that nursing care. So, in an attempt to meet the legislative requirements so they’re not in trouble from the department for being noncompliant, they’re bringing in agency nurses from the cities, who are paid at a much higher rate, which is blowing out the budget for these places.

Worse still, it’s impacting the morale of the workforce. Picture a local registered nurse with 30 years experience working side by side with a new graduate, someone without that experience. They could be a good person, but they don’t have any experience. They’re not committed to the community; they’ve just flown up from Melbourne, Adelaide or somewhere to work for two weeks. For them to be earning more money than the local person, while they’re working side by side, doing the same job, is a circumstance that’s got to be fixed.

We’ve seen it with doctors. In an attempt to fix something in the short term—by throwing money at people to go and live and work in these remote places—we’ve actually created a bigger problem. We’ve got doctors now who choose being a locum as a career, rather than establishing themselves in a community. Now we’re starting to see that with the nurses coming into aged care.

That got Southern Cross Care into a degree of financial problems, and I do want to recognise Minister Wells for her personal attention to this and the relief package that we got for Southern Cross Care. Broken Hill is a long way from other communities, and Far West Local Health now, in an attempt to free up their critical care beds, are moving people out, and, with Southern Cross not having the ability to take them, we are seeing people sent to Balranald, which is over 400 kilometres away. And so, as the member for Riverina spoke about, couples who have maybe been together for 60 or 65 years spend their final years apart. I’ve had family members who have had dementia, and part of the care is the ability for a family member to come in—because the nursing staff don’t have that much time—to help feed them lunch, to stand there and hold their hand just for them to have company. There’s all of that. So this is a tragedy.

I’ve been working with the Lake Cargelligo All Care group now for 15 years, I reckon, and the Murrumbidgee Local Health District are in the final stages of the plans for expanding the Lake Cargelligo MPS. I believe that those plans are now on the desk of the New South Wales health minister. I’m hoping that we can see that, because I’ve spoken to a couple of gentlemen in Lake Cargelligo whose wives have passed away—one was in West Wyalong and one was in Condobolin, both of them 110 kilometres away from where they lived. These gentlemen were in their mid-80s, and, at best, they could see their wives one day a week.

I’m pleased that Senator Ruston was able to negotiate more money for regional Australia, because the irony of all of this is that those towns with the smaller facilities have no other option, but the facilities are more expensive to run, so this is a need.

The other thing is that I think we have to have a conversation with the Australian people to make them understand that they’re going to have to plan for their old age. Whether they like it or not, they can’t just pretend that someone’s going to be there. They’ve got to have a plan because, if they don’t have a plan for themselves, they’ll end up in someone else’s plan and it mightn’t be what suits them. I met with the Probus Club in Broken Hill earlier this year, and they were quite upset about the lack of aged-care beds in the town. Basically they were saying, ‘We’ve paid taxes all our lives; the government should look after us in our old age.’ Well, the reality is that that’s going to change and you are going to have to contribute. If you have an asset you’re going to have to contribute in a fair way. This bill has recognised that. It’s not an extreme request for more money, but people, particularly younger generations, are going to have to plan. As everyone ages, they are going to have to have a plan so that they know what will happen when they get to a certain point. I’ve dealt with some tragic cases over the last 17 years when elderly people have not thought about this. Their partner has passed away, or their partner has had a stroke or a dementia diagnosis and all of a sudden they’re caring for someone—when they just do not have the capacity to do that and they are without somewhere to go. So you need to know what your options are under various scenarios as you age.

Sometimes, as members of parliament, we don’t do very well at this conversation. We tend to say to people, ‘Look, we’ll go to the minister,’ and we say we’ll do this and do that. But we need to have a conversation with the Australian people so they can understand this legislation in its final form. We have not seen that yet, but the intent of this legislation is to put a framework in place for the next stage of aged care in this country, and everyone in this country needs to be prepared for that. As someone who will be leaving this place after 17 years, when I’ll be at the official age of retirement, I know you need to have plans based on two scenarios—you’re going to live to be a hundred or you’re going to die tomorrow—and you need those plans in place. That is incredibly important.

I might finish, in the last minute or so, by talking about the wonderful facilities in my electorate. I spoke about Broken Hill just as an example, but that could be replicated right across my electorate. We’ve got Cooee Lodge in Gilgandra. We’ve got Cooinda in Coonabarabran. Both are fantastic facilities. In my home town there’s Naroo. I can proudly say that my parents were instrumental in that. My father was the chairman of the committee—he was the local mayor—that got Naroo built in the first place. I go to visit those people, and the people I admired as a young person in Warialda, the community leaders of 40 years ago, are now getting cared for by people they know. When you’re in aged care in a place like Warialda, Coonabarabran, Gilgandra, Coonamble—any of those towns—you’re being cared for by someone who has a connection to you. You are not just an old person in a bed; you are known, respected and loved. We can’t let that go. We’ve got to make sure we maintain those facilities.

We don’t talk about this enough. We talk about health care, about education, about child care, but the ability to die in your own town, surrounded by your family and friends, is a basic human need. We can’t shuffle people around like a commodity. Hopefully—I’ve got great faith in this legislation—those things will be addressed. I give support to the concept. I’ll make my judgement when I see the final bill, but I think this is a step in the right direction.