Minister goes missing

The true test of next week’s budget must not be the tax cuts or the “roadmaps” it promises, but how much the government is willing to actually spend in areas of genuine need. 

The area most in need of more funding is aged care. Health department officials have estimated the cost of meeting the backlog for home care to be between $2 billion and $2.5 billion per year, not to mention what’s needed to bring residential homes up to scratch. How much will the government put aside to fix the disaster this sector has become? We could ask Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck, but he continues to avoid the media (and no wonder). Hopefully there’s something big in store, otherwise we’re facing a budget in which Australia’s wealthiest get massive personal tax cuts, while the most vulnerable get shafted again. And it’s not as if we don’t know how badly help is needed.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was set up in October 2018 to address multiple terrible failures across the sector. The failures were exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, to the extent that there have been more than 650 deaths in the aged-care system – making up roughly three-quarters of all Australian coronavirus fatalities. 

The royal commission yesterday released a special report on the response to COVID-19 and it was an indictment of basically every aspect of the management of aged care, which is supposed to be the responsibility of the Commonwealth government. Months into the crisis, there was no real planning, insufficient resources, no clear lines of command, a lack of infection-control procedures, and the list goes on and on.

Levels of depression, anxiety, confusion, loneliness and suicide risk among aged-care residents have increased since lockdowns started, too.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, new data released by the federal health department tells us that around 50,000 people are only in aged care because they couldn’t get support to stay at home. The lack of adequate support and funding put all of them at massive risk.

Health department officials told the COVID-19 Senate inquiry hearing this week that of the 211,029 people assessed as eligible for a home-care package (to support medication management by a nurse, or provide help with showering, cooking and getting dressed etc), only 43 per cent were receiving the level of care they were approved for.

Ten thousand people died in 2018–19 while they were on the waiting list for home care. One hundred thousand people were on the waiting list for a home-care package.

In a couple of magisterial essays in The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton wrote about the policy “reforms” that have inexorably led to this crisis. They started in the Howard era (“The abandonment of minimum staffing requirements had private equity firms and American corporates salivating. Suddenly, frail older Australians had become big business”) and were made worse by successive governments, with profits replacing care as the driving force for change. To make matters worse, the Coalition – when Morrison was treasurer – cut $1.7 billion in subsidies from the sector.

The federal government has a responsibility to fix this mess. And it has a budget to deliver. As JobSeeker and JobKeeper funding is withdrawn, and rent and mortgage pauses also end, personal tax cuts and deregulation will do nothing to help people who are struggling now. If the government is looking to boost employment, it should start with more and better jobs in aged care. There must be more funding for home-care packages. Beyond that, there needs to be a fundamental rethink of aged care in Australia. 

BREAKING NEWS: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have both tested positive for COVID-19. This is not a drill.

P.S. Thanks for your company this week. Paddy Manning will be back on deck next week. 

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