STEVE CANNANE, RADIO NATIONAL: The Albanese Government has hailed what it calls a once-in-a-generation overhaul of the aged care sector after major changes were passed by Parliament yesterday. The changes will force some aged care residents to pay more, a move intended to help the industry cover increased demands from Australia's ageing population. They come more than three years on from the final report of the Aged Care Royal Commission. And joining us now is Anika Wells, the Minister for Aged Care. Thanks for coming on.
ANIKA WELLS, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND MINISTER FOR SPORT: Good morning, Steve.
CANNANE: This is a very large and complex set of reforms. Tell us what it means for someone who may be entering aged care in the coming years.
WELLS: Well, what I hope it means, first and foremost for that person, is that they're not approaching aged care with the sense of fear that people had in the years running up to the Royal Commission, and then certainly with the revelations and stories that came out in the Royal Commission. It has been a sector that has been mired in crisis. We have been working for nearly three years to bring it back from the brink. And what I hope people will see now with the passing of these bills in the Parliament yesterday, is a new era for aged care where you can have faith and trust in a system that will look after you and give you the services that you need when you need them.
CANNANE: Might they fear the cost? Because this will put more of the cost burden on the residents. Fees, charges and financial management by providers are already some of the most common issues the regulator gets complaints on. What guardrails will be in place to make sure that the providers don't rip these people off?
WELLS: A couple of things. First and foremost, there is a strong safety net and strong financial hardship provisions enshrined within this bill. We have said all along that because of the numbers of people entering the system and because of the need to increase the quality of the services in the system, we need to find a way to put more money into a system that needs more money. But we've always said all along that it should only be the case that if you can afford to contribute a little bit more to the cost of your care, then you should. If you can't, then you don't need to.
And another guiding principle we've used all the way along this very long journey has been that you should never have to pay for the cost of your clinical care. You should never have to make a decision about whether you can afford to get your wound dressed. Much like Medicare, we want people to know that if they need clinical care in the home, that it will be there for them.
CANNANE: Will the regulator have any powers to monitor how much providers are charging and hold them to account about that?
WELLS: That's another initiative that we put in place before we introduced these bills to the Parliament in September. The initiative’s called Dollars into Care[sic], and we put that in first because we wanted people to have a sense of trust in the system. So right now you can go on our website and look at any nursing home in the country, and you can see what they are putting towards food, staffing, admin, profits. And that data is updated regularly so that you can see where providers are choosing to put their money in the nursing home where your loved one is. And if you're not happy with where they're putting it, you can make a move. And there are higher and a stronger regulatory power- there are stronger regulatory powers for the Commission enshrined in these passages as well, so that they can crack down on dodgy providers and people who are doing the wrong thing.
CANNANE: Okay, you mentioned dodgy providers. In Opposition, you promised dodgy providers would face jail time for any repeated neglect and abuse, but that's been dropped from the final reforms. Why is that?
WELLS: We did. We did, and we fought very, very hard to keep that in right up until the last moment. But that was a red line for the Opposition, and ultimately not something that we were able to convince them of in order to secure bipartisanship for this bill. And this bill had to be …
CANNANE: [Interrupts] So do you see that a weakness in this legislation?
WELLS: I think it would be stronger with criminal penalties, absolutely. I make no qualms about that. But I did also assure myself with people like the consumer advocates, with COTA, with OPAN, that there were still strong civil penalties and stronger powers for the Commission to go after people in this bill. Overall, there are still stronger powers as a result of this bill, and now there are civil penalties where you can get fined up to $1.5 million for doing the wrong thing. These are still strong improvements in the bill.
CANNANE: This is considered a move to more of a rights-based system, and the Greens are saying those rights won't be enforceable. If a provider is breaching the rights of a person in aged care, what would happen to them?
WELLS: Well, firstly, the Greens voted against this bill, which I find absolutely extraordinary. And talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good. This is, like you started with, once-in-a-generation reform that puts people at the heart of aged care. It's a rights-based bill. There is a statement of rights. There is a statement of principles. Those rights are enforceable. There is a complaints commissioner that you can escalate to if you do not think that your rights are being upheld by providers. All in all, from the previous Aged Care Act, which was essentially provisions which guided taxpayer money to providers for different services, to a new rights-based act which is forward leaning and sets the sector up for the future – this is a huge win for people who want better quality and better faith in aged care, and I still remain incredulous that the Greens voted against it at the last gasp.
CANNANE: On Radio National Breakfast it's 07.42, and we're talking to Anika Wells, the Minister for Aged Care. You've boosted home care places. That means more people being helped to stay at home. But the regulator says the level of compliance among service providers in that area is unacceptably low. Will these reforms see any improvements in that area?
WELLS: These reforms will make for the greatest release of Home Care Packages on record. Previously, the most Home Care Packages that had ever been released was 80,000 across two years – that was during the last months of the Morrison government. This will see as of 1 July, when the new Support at Home system begins, 83,000 packages released in the first year. That's more than the previous record in just the one year – 107,000 packages across this two-year period. And that's in recognition of the fact, like you say, there are people on the waitlist, there are people needing services, and we've tried to move as fast as we can along this very long reform journey, which has involved complex structural reform. And it's been a good process, and now we need to work to transition the sector as quickly as possible to the new world, to Support at Home.
CANNANE: Okay. I want to move on to another issue on the political agenda this week. Labor's plans for restrictions on gambling ads have been delayed once again, despite commitments made by the Minister that Labor's response would be seen some time before Christmas. You must be disappointed by this?
WELLS: Well, we won't be introducing those reforms this week, but I think we all remain committed to working through the 31 recommendations of the Murphy inquiry. We have taken the harm incurred by gambling very seriously this government. Our response to protect Australians has been important. We've done more in two years to tackle gambling harder than anyone else. BetStop is world leading and doing really important things. We've got mandatory customer ID verification for online wagering. We've banned the use of credit cards in online wagering. We have made really important improvements through Minister Rowland and Minister Rishworth, and we'll all keep working on these 31 recommendations.
CANNANE: But on ads, you've done nothing. And that was something that was very, very important to the late Peta Murphy. She found in her review that she chaired that gambling ads were grooming young children to gamble. What's Labor going to do about preventing that kind of grooming right now?
WELLS: We're working through the 31 recommendations with all of the different stakeholders in this space. And like you said, as the Minister for Sport, my stakeholders are stakeholders who are our professional codes, our national sporting organisations, and the people like Sporting Integrity Australia, who try and regulate, maintain and improve sporting integrity in this country. As a Sport Minister who always tries to be athlete-led, there are athletes who are being targeted by the rise of gambling and the proliferation of gambling advertising – not just in professional codes now, but in the junior leagues we've seen those stories come out. So it is something that we're working through. Sporting Integrity Australia works not just with people like myself, but with comparative organisations across the world – places like the World Anti-Doping Agency, where I sit on the executive committee. These are complex but important reforms, and I look forward to continuing to work on them.
CANNANE: Given the fact of how many young players do have gambling problems, particularly around sports betting, what do you think about the code's role here in lobbying, specifically the Prime Minister? And we know that the codes have been talking to the Prime Minister. What do you think about the role that they're playing to try and kill off these reforms?
WELLS: I wouldn't characterise it that way at all, Steve. I think- and if you look at the public remarks that codes have made along this journey, they agree that something needs to be done. It's about finding something that's workable, that everybody can live with and that won't impact the financial models in a way that taxpayers might be required to bring to bear. We've got a lot of competing priorities. We’ve got cost of living …
CANNANE: [Interrupts] I'm not sure that's the nuanced kind of argument that Peter V'landys has been making, for example.
WELLS: Well, Peter V'landys absolutely is one of the players in this area. But there's lots more and we've got to work through the nuances and concerns of all of them, and that's why we're going to continue to do that.
CANNANE: Okay. Anika Wells, we'll have to leave it there. Thanks for your time this morning.
WELLS: Have a good morning.
CANNANE: Thank you. Anika Wells, the Minister for Aged Care there.