Senator QUIRKE (10:46 AM) —I think we almost ought to start here with a moment's silence for what this government has done to aged care and indeed what it attempted to do under the Moylan so-called reforms a few years ago. I speak here today—and I am not going to delay this by taking my full allocation of time—to get a few remarks on the public record about some specific problems. It seems that the government is not only happy roughing up pensioners and roughing up nursing home people; they also want to rough up my home state of South Australia.

It would appear that in South Australia there has been a much more zealous application by this government of the residential classification scale. I say that because, when officers go out and review various nursing home patients, nationally there has been a 37 per cent figure for downgrading—that is, 37 per cent of residents have incurred the provisions whereby the nursing home that is providing that care needs to downgrade the facilities which are provided and pay back, as I understand it, six months of fees to the Commonwealth. That is a fairly high figure.

But the zealots in South Australia have managed to score a 72 per cent figure. It would appear that nursing homes in South Australia have been singled out for a bit of extra special care. We have had cases where some care providers have had to foot the bill for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to go back to the Commonwealth. In some instances, we have had facilities so heavily penalised that it has become a really significant problem for them, because anyone who knows much about this industry knows that it is not an enormously profitable industry for individual persons who run nursing homes. It may well be that it will make a lot of money for the Doug Morans of this world if they can get the right government policy up or if they are in business long enough—and I single out that particular individual because I think that, until the Howard government saw how unpopular their changes were the other year, he was really the minister for aged care in this country.

I want to say for South Australia on this issue that, whilst this bill makes a number of technical amendments, it is appropriate for us to have a look at where we are going with this. In South Australia we have to be very cognisant of the fact that we have a larger aged profile than many other states in this country. In fact, in South Australia we probably will be facing problems of health and ageing more than most other parts of this country, because South Australia is a place many people go to to retire. Sadly, many young people from South Australia see that they can have a better career in the bigger eastern states, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney. Many of these people come back at the end of their working life.

This is not a new phenomenon. There are whole areas of South Australia, particularly down at Victor Harbor and a number of other spots, where people find that they can retire, give up their working life in Sydney, sell their assets there and realise a very much more substantial gain on those assets than they ever would have in South Australia. They would also have had more profitable employment over the years so that, when they come back to South Australia, they are reasonably well set up. But the problem for us as a community is that we then have to make sure that when they go to the next stage—that is, the need for aged care accommodation—they are adequately provided for.

I do not want to go on for too long about this today, but I just want to get it on record. I would like some answers as to why the rate in South Australia is double the national average. In fact, if I look at the RCS review statistics for the different states in the first half of this year, I find that in fact for the downgrading in New South Wales it is a figure of 28 per cent and in Victoria it is 57 per cent. Some questions need to be asked as to what the difference is between those two states. I cannot at this stage see what the difference would be, other than the zealousness of some of the officers who are carrying out these reviews. In Queensland it is 25 per cent, in Western Australia 51 per cent and in Tasmania 34 per cent. The national average is 37 per cent, but in South Australia it is 72 per cent.

Several questions immediately emerge from this. Why is there such a high figure in South Australia? What has generated this? What is different in South Australia compared with the other states? The second question is why in the three larger states—and that includes Queensland—there is such an enormous discrepancy between Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. The statistics that I have just elaborated to the Senate should start to ring some alarm bells, particularly within the department. It is quite obvious that there are problems here that really need to be addressed and addressed very quickly.

What has been put to me by the providers in South Australia is that this process has been grossly unfair to them. It is threatening their viability and, indeed, it is adversely affecting my state more than anywhere else. The figures that I have just read out seem to support what the providers are saying. Very large and substantial amounts of money are going from providers into Commonwealth coffers in South Australia which is not happening in other states, and the question as to why this is the case seriously has to be asked.