Senator SANTORO (Minister for Ageing) (5:21 PM) —in reply—I table a supplementary explanatory memorandum. I have appreciated listening to the contributions of all senators in relation to the Aged Care Amendment (Residential Care) Bill 2006. This legislation will make amendments to the Aged Care Act 1997. In the 2006-07 federal budget the coalition government announced that it would bring the treatment of assets for aged-care purposes into line with its treatment for pension purposes in relation to limits on the gifting of assets and the concessional treatment of complying income streams. The legislation gives effect to these changes and will enable Centrelink and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to streamline their systems so that they no longer have to assess gifted assets differently when they undertake aged-care assets assessments on behalf of the Department of Health and Ageing. This will prevent a pensioner who has been assessed as eligible for residential aged care from gifting away most of their assets before entering care and thereby avoiding paying an accommodation payment and becoming eligible for the government’s concessional resident supplement.

From September 2007, the treatment of income streams purchased on or after 20 September 2007 will also be aligned. Income streams purchased prior to 20 September 2007 will continue to enjoy the 100 per cent exemption from the aged-care assets test that currently applies. Residents and prospective residents will be better placed to make decisions about their care needs as a result of these changes because they will have greater certainty about their financial situation and status prior to entry. This legislation will also remove uncertainty about the powers that aged-care assessment teams possess in approving extensions to residential respite care. The legislation will allow the secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing to, where there is a need to do so, delegate to ACAT delegates the power to increase the maximum number of days allowed by a period of 21 days.

This legislation further delivers on initiatives in the 2004-05 Investing in Australia’s Aged Care: More Places, Better Care package to streamline administration for better care. This demonstrates the coalition government’s strong commitment to ensuring a robust and viable aged-care sector into the future providing high quality and affordable care to older Australians.

As I said, I have enjoyed the contributions from all honourable senators. In particular, I thank the opposition for their indication of support for the amendments that are before the Senate here this evening. I would like to respond in some detail to all of the contributions made by honourable senators. I will commence with some responses to Senator McLucas’s proposed amendment. I am happy to elaborate further after she speaks if she chooses to do so. Senator McLucas suggested that the bill be amended so that it requires every residential aged-care facility to be subject to one unannounced support contact by the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency. The agency will in 2006-07 conduct no less than 5,200 visits to aged-care homes, of which 3,000 will be spot checks. Under the changes that I announced in July 2006, the agency is required to maintain an average visiting schedule of 1.75 visits per home per year. I can assure Senator McLucas that the intent of part of her amendment will certainly be fulfilled by the accreditation agency.

Senator McLucas’s amendment also seeks to implement a rule such that residential aged-care facilities must not be given any prior notice of support contact visits. I can advise Senator McLucas that the current legislation states that the approved provider must be given written notice in advance of any support contact visit or audit. This can range from five minutes to five days. The accreditation agency will continue to exercise reasonable discretion in terms of the amount of notice that is given to providers. If it is meant to be very short-term notice, that is the notice that will be provided.

Senator McLucas, through her amendment, also wants assessment teams conducting the support contacts to have to assess the facility against all quality outcomes of the aged-care standards of the accreditation agency. Senator McLucas knows that the current system consists of a full site audit every three years, with support contact visits or spot checks in between. If Senator McLucas in her continuing consultations with the industry raises this issue, she will be informed that a full audit is extremely disruptive for an aged-care home.

A spot check is designed to focus on areas that may have been identified either in previous reviews or through other avenues. Agency support contact visits assess whether or not an audit is justified or warranted. It can be a means by which the necessity for a full review is found to be warranted, and that can then be conducted. Support contact visits do not assess all 44 standards. There are very good reasons for that, as Senator McLucas would appreciate. I am advised, Senator McLucas, that a full site audit can take up to five days with up to five staff for a large home, and can be very disruptive for the orderly and effective management of an aged-care home. In addition, I have been informed that a full site audit can cost around $10,000 on average. If we were to do this for all homes on an annual basis, that would cost the industry an additional $21 million per year. And that is quite separate from the disruption that I have just mentioned. I believe that the current system as it stands is efficient and appropriate and does not use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as Senator Barnett said earlier during this debate.

In her remarks, Senator McLucas also stated that the committee inquiry recommended passing the bill in its entirety without amendment. With all due respect to Senator McLucas and the amendment which will be before the chamber tonight, the committee agreed to pass the bill without amendment and here we will be considering an amendment by her.

Senator McLucas —And by you.

Senator SANTORO —And by me. You are absolutely right. I take your interjection in the spirit that it is meant, and that is that things do suddenly arise, as happened for the government, where a very competent body brought a fairly technical situation to our attention and we had to respond. I want to come back to that right now.

During her contribution Senator McLucas queried the process by which we went about making the amendment to our amending bill. The amendment was drafted in response to an approach to my office by the Investment and Financial Services Association last week. IFSA—and I want to stress this—approached my office after the deadline for submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs had closed and the committee had met. Otherwise you can rest assured that we would have brought the matter up for the committee’s consideration. I am satisfied that my office took very swift action in responding to the representations of IFSA last week. They have acknowledged that in discussions. I am also satisfied that we did all we could to implement this amendment swiftly and transparently and conducted the appropriate consultations with the appropriate members of the committee, such as its chair, Senator Humphries, and others through a revised explanatory memorandum, which I have just tabled. As Senator McLucas quite correctly identified, it was a new piece of information that we had to respond to, and we did that as expeditiously and transparently as possible.

Regarding Senator Nettle’s amendment, I would like to note that we provided a lot more advice with our amendment than the amendment proposed by the Greens just this morning. I say that with all due respect to the intention of the Greens’ amendment. Senator Nettle’s amendment suggests that the bill be amended to reflect that a person’s access to residential aged care is not discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation and that the definition of a member of a couple includes same-sex partners. In responding to Senator Nettle’s amendment, can I say that the government is committed to removing unfair discriminatory treatment from federal laws. This includes a commitment to eliminating unfair discrimination against all interdependent relationships. Both the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have stated publicly that they are strongly in favour of removing unfair discrimination against interdependent relationships. The government has already made a number of changes to eliminate unfair discrimination in this area. The chief amendment proposed by Senator Nettle is an additional qualification to the definition of a member of a couple. The amendment alters the definition to specifically refer to same-sex partners.

The government believes—and I think the government’s views were quite adequately expressed by Senator Humphries in his concluding remarks—that these issues should be considered through a holistic examination of all government legislation rather than in an ad hoc way and is currently looking closely at further eliminating unfair discriminatory treatment against interdependent relationships. It has made these statements previously to the Senate. I certainly have done so in relation to other legislation that the Senate has been considering. In good faith I reiterate those sentiments to Senator Nettle and the Greens, but, regrettably and because of the reasons mentioned, we will not be supporting the amendment moved by Senator Nettle on behalf of the Greens.

Much to the surprise of all senators, I probably will not take all the time remaining to me, but I would like to address some other issues that were raised by honourable senators from both sides. Senator McLucas again raised the issue of the government’s response to Professor Hogan’s long-term recommendations. I again assure Senator McLucas that the government is very seriously considering its response. She would appreciate from her discussions with parts of the sector that it is a very complex issue. It is not a simple and easy issue to provide an immediate response to. I think Senator McLucas mentioned that the government has been considering its response for 16 or 17 months.

Senator McLucas —Fourteen.

Senator SANTORO —I think that the sector and Senator McLucas will be quite happy with the government’s eventual response to Professor Hogan’s report. I am not trying to obfuscate; we are trying to get the best result. We are still consulting very extensively with the advisory committee, with individual stakeholders, with churches and right across the board. I really have been flat strap taking in all the views. There is nothing political, mischievous or sinister in our considering the views of the industry to the length that we have. I expect to be in a position at some time in the future to provide a comprehensive response to Professor Hogan’s recommendations on long-term reform.

Senator McLucas mentioned an aged-care home in Victoria that failed 30 of the 44 standards and only got four months less on accreditation. The home that she referred to was the Elizabeth House private home. Sanctions were not applied there as there was not an immediate or severe risk to the health and safety or wellbeing of the residents, as the Aged Care Act requires. Senator McLucas would appreciate that the absolute bottom line of everything that we as a government do and that I personally as a minister oversee is the welfare of the residents within our aged-care facilities. All the people in the department share that commitment and that ideal of service, and sometimes some fairly tough decisions have to be made.

When a breach occurs which looks severe, including breaches that may involve serious assault or sexual assault, we are often asked by Senator McLucas and others on her side of the chamber, or even members of the community, ‘Why is that aged-care facility still allowed to operate?’ It is very simple. To just shut down a facility and get people out of the facility very quickly is not always a feasible option. Senator McLucas knows that through no fault of the government there was recently the closure of an aged-care facility in Victoria with all the commotion and emotional drain that that caused to residents.

Senator Patterson interjecting—

Senator SANTORO —Beg yours?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hutchins)—Speak through the chair please, Minister.

Senator Patterson interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT —You can interject all you like, but no-one is recording it, so keep talking, Minister.

Senator SANTORO —No disrespect to you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I was just asking if Senator Patterson would clarify what she was saying. The point that I am making is that severe sanctions including the closure of a nursing home can sometimes be considered but that may be against the best interests of residents and is not always an easy thing to do.

Senator Nettle spoke at length about aged care and migrants. In broad response to Senator Nettle I will say that, with all due recognition to the tremendous amount of work that former ministers like Senator Patterson did before me, there probably has never been an aged-care minister in Australia who has been able to bring about as ethnically sensitive a perspective to the administration of aged care in Australia. With a name like Santo Santoro and having been born overseas and with all that sort of thought and argument, I am very much concerned about and interested in advancing the policy agenda when it comes to looking after ageing and frail migrants.

The Australian government does provide support for all Australians in need of aged care, including those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. As of March 2006, there were 180 ethno-specific residential aged-care services, with 7,079 places. Additionally, the Australian government recognises that extra support is required to ensure good access by people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In 2006-07, the Australian government will be funding over 40 organisations to provide further support for aged-care services. The Community Partners Program—one of the programs which provides the support—will continue in 2006-07 with funding of $2.4 million. Thirty-five new projects have been approved under the Community Partners Program for the 2006-07 financial year, and around 24 communities will benefit from this funding, including five projects for the newly funded Afghanistani, Iraqi, Albanian, Thai and Laos communities.

It may also interest members to know that in the near future I will be meeting with the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia, possibly as soon as next week. During the past two or three visits interstate, I have met with representatives of migrant communities on a number of occasions and have benefited greatly from the advice that they have been able to provide to me on behalf of the people that they represent.

Senator Webber raised some issues relating to the workforce. She quite rightly raised concerns about the growing requirements for a workforce that already provides very valuable service to the aged and the frail, in both residential settings and community settings. Of course, with respect, I think that Senator Webber was a little cynical, because we should recognise in this chamber and anywhere else that right across the Western world there is an acute shortage of doctors and nurses. I will not go through at any great length the great amount of funding and the intended increase in the number of new doctors and nurses that the federal government has provided for through that funding, but the Howard government has provided $229 million for workforce initiatives for the 2005-09 period, including upskilling opportunities—for example, 5,200 enrolled nurses being educated in medication management—1,600 new nursing places to universities that demonstrate aged-care expertise and emphasis, and 1,000 aged-care scholarships. Of course, the government has undertaken and will continue to undertake aged-care workforce surveys.

I very much appreciated Senator Barnett’s contribution because he again clearly outlined the great contribution that this government has made in terms of investment in the aged-care sector—$2.2 billion—and the great increases in places that we have spoken about in this chamber, both during question time and on other occasions. I will not go through the details of the contributions of Senator Barnett, Senator Adams and Senator Humphries. They put very much on the record in a very eloquent way the government’s contribution to the aged-care sector since 1996. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.