ALISON BYRNES, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CUNNINGHAM: It's great to be here at Greenhills in Figtree today. A big thank you to the team for having us here on the lands of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Nation. Great news today. Everybody knows that when we were elected government back in 2022, there were significant challenges across the aged care and also our health sector. And it's something that I've been working hard on for four years, and joined by Carol, to start to address some of the issues of thousand-bed shortages, bed block here in the Illawarra. We've already invested $16 million into the IRT for another 48 beds, and we're delighted to have another investment here today. which Minister Rae is going to announce, and I'll hand over to him. Thank you.
SAM RAE, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SENIORS: Before I speak, I might just let Carol say hello and talk this is part of her patch that we’re covering today.
CAROL BERRY, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR WHITLAM: Thank you. We're so grateful that the Minister’s down today making this announcement. Alison and I have advocated really strongly for our region. We know we've got some significant bad blocking challenges here, and so what we're announcing today is going to go a long way to alleviating some of those challenges, so really pleased to be introducing Minister Rae this morning. Thanks for being here.
RAE: Thank you to you both. I am very fortunate. I'm blessed with some amazing colleagues in the Federal Parliament. These two I would say are particularly relentless in the way that they go about advocating for the local community here, and that's what brings us on this beautiful morning to Hillside here in Figtree. This is one of six locations that we're announcing today, an additional $25.6 million of federal government investment. Now, when we looked across the country, the places where we're having the biggest challenges in terms bringing on new aged care beds, the Illawarra was one of those places that we identified. It's not always the best word to use, but unfortunately, the supply of beds and them coming on board with the sector had become somewhat ‘constipated’. And so, it was very clear to the Federal Government that across these four locations, including the Illawarra, the Hunter, a bit further north from here as well as metropolitan Adelaide and metropolitan Perth, that we had to do something a little bit special. That's why we announced in the first place this special ACCAP round to target those four hotspots. We’ve got six fantastic projects that have been identified through that work across Illawarra, and of course this is one of those beautiful examples.
We want to make sure that every older Australian, no matter where they live, and of course here in the Illawarra, can get access to world-class aged care services, and that's what these investments are all about. Now, happy to take some questions, or we can just stand around in this beautiful sunshine
JOURNALIST: Seventy-three beds in total – what is timeline on delivery? Can cost blow out beyond what has been sort of tipped for this because of construction costs and supply issues?
RAE: Part of the focus has always been, through this special ACCAP round, bringing these beds on as quickly as possible. Our ambition has been to bring them on within 24 months. It’s part of why we selected these projects that were already at a point of maturity, and they’re all expansion projects with established providers, relationships across the community. We'll be working really closely with local government and state government partners to make sure that we get these beds online as quickly as possible.
JOURNALIST: As of March, the number of stranded patients in hospitals in the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District increased from 121 to 166 over the last 12 months. Will this supply be enough, or are there going to be further rounds that sort of meets the demand in this area?
RAE: The issue of delayed discharge of older people in our hospitals is a longstanding issue. It’s a very complex issue, and we should be upfront about this. There are no silver bullets to this challenge. We've got to keep working the way that these two colleagues have been with our state counterparts, with our local government counterparts. We've got to make sure that we're looking at every option to bring on additional residential aged care, as well as to make sure that older people can age in place and receive the care and services that they need at home, to keep them out of the residential care system for as long as possible.
JOURNALIST: What else is the Government doing to try and address that shortfall of a thousand beds?
RAE: I just touched there on what we’re doing in terms of home care. Rightly, our communities have an evolving expectation of what aged care looks like. And while we've got fantastic, really high-quality residential aged care, such as right here at Hillside, we know that people have differing needs, and of course people do want to stay close to friends and family and community.
By the end of this financial year, we'll have 420,000 people accessing Support at Home, and that will have nearly tripled since 2020. These are historic investments in a model of care that is best for older people and best for government budgets as well. That's on top of the more than 830,000 people who are receiving services under the Commonwealth Home Support Program. So we need to invest at every stage of the aged care system, keep people in their home as long as possible, support them where it's safe and appropriate to do so to stay close to their communities, as well as making sure that we’ve got these really high quality residential aged care options, such as right here.
JOURNALIST: The New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park said it’s an issue of the Federal Government. How are you working with him to address this issue?
RAE: We’re working really closely with all of our state government counterparts across the board. As I said, there's no silver bullet solutions. This is a generational challenge. This year, 90,000 Australians will have an 80th birthday, and that’s one of those key measurements that the policymakers use to understand what demand looks like in our aged care system. Now 15 years ago, that was only 15,000 Australians having an 80th birthday. That’s grown by 600 per cent in 15 years. We have a generational public policy challenge on our hands when it comes to meeting the needs of older people in our community. We’re up for it. The state governments are up for it. We’re working closely with our New South Wales counterparts and all other state governments across the country, and we’ll continue to do that.
JOURNALIST: Once the money arrives for this, how does it work? Do more rooms need to be built, or are there rooms in these homes already that you can just sort of put beds in? How does it work?
RAE: So in this particular project- and I'm not the construction manager, we've got the team over here, these amazing human beings who work so hard to deliver care here every day. And Vitas, the CEO, will be able to fill you in on some more details. But there’s $4 million that is being invested here that will create an additional 20 beds. I believe they're going to be built. There's a patch of grass below us just here. So again, taking advantage of what is already a fantastic facility, amazing human beings delivering care every single day, and bringing these beds online as quickly as possible so that we can meet some of that need across this community.
JOURNALIST: And how will new health providers meet the staffing challenge when they bring new beds online?
RAE: That’s a great question, because we do have significant workforce challenges across our health sector. We all know that. First thing I want to say is again, we have incredible human beings that work in the aged care sector, highly skilled, highly trained people. They need to be paid properly, and that's why we've invested $18 billion in aged care wages to make sure that our age care workers are remunerated the way that they should be, and that they're incentivized to stay in the sector.
We're also investing in a whole range of scholarship and training opportunities so that people who are either thinking about entering the sector or who are already established and want to build upon their skills base can continue to do so. Again, we’ll work with our state counterparts and across the Federal Government with the skills space to make sure that we’ve got a pipeline of workers and opportunities for career development that maintain that really high level quality of care that we want to deliver to every Australian.