CLAIRE CLUTTERHAM, MEMBER FOR STURT: Good morning, everyone. My name is Claire Clutterham. I'm the Federal Member for Sturt. It's great to be here at the Amber Aged Care facility in Paradise in the heart of Sturt on this very fresh Adelaide morning. I'm joined this morning by Sam Rae, the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Chris Picton, the Acting Health Minister, and Louise Miller-Frost, the Member for Boothby in the Australian Federal Parliament.
We know that elderly Australians have spent their lives making huge contributions to their families, and to our community, and they deserve quality and dignified care in the later stages of their life. And that's why it's great to be here this morning to hear from the Minister about this exciting announcement, which will enable Amber healthcare facility to provide additional aged care beds and provide that dignified and quality healthcare elderly Australians deserve.
So I’ll hand over to the Minister to explain more about the announcement.
SAM RAE, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SENIORS: Thank you very much, Claire. It is extraordinary to be here at Amber Aged Care in Paradise this morning. Claire pointed out it's a bit fresh. I can assure you that it's a little bit warmer here than where I've come from in regional Victoria. But of course, as she said, older Australians, people who built our communities, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to. Every older Australian deserves high quality, dignified aged care. And that is what this facility in the community here have been providing over such a long period of time, which is why it's a great place to come today to recognise the amazing workers, the people who come here every day to look after the parents and grandparents that we all love so much, and of course, to make this very latest announcement in terms of the work that's been going on between the Federal Government, the South Australian Government. It's great to have Minister Picton here, the acting Health Minister for the day, but of course, a colleague who I worked with closely in his previous role, to bring projects like this to life. My two colleagues behind me from the Federal Parliament have been tireless advocates for investment in residential and in-home aged care here in South Australia and Adelaide.
And today, we are making this announcement. There’s $34.5 million of federal money, but importantly, it unlocks $134 million of investment in metropolitan Adelaide and delivers another 268 residential aged care beds. We want to continue to work with the South Australian Government. I know Minister Boyer has a keen eye on the work that we're doing together here as well as with the aged care sector to make sure that we get the very best care for all the people across Australia. On that note, I'm going to throw to Minister Picton, and then we'll take some questions after Louise Miller-Frost speaks.
CHRIS PICTON, ACTING SA HEALTH MINISTER: Look, thank you very much, Sam. It's a delight to be here representing Minister Boyer, but it's also a topic I know a little bit about. And this has been something that we've been working on for a long time between the South Australian Government and the Federal Government and Minister Rae and Minister Butler. And I really want to thank them for their investment in taking this issue seriously. And this is really now a landmark day because we're now seeing this investment starting to unlock the capacity in aged care, and that is going to be critical not just for aged care, but right the way through the health system.
We know that there's over 400 people in our hospitals right now who don't need to be there, who need to be in aged care, but all of our aged care facilities are full. So to see this investment from the Federal Government, unlocking over 250 beds, is fantastic news for all South Australians. An investment like this here in the north-eastern suburbs, I know there's big investments coming in the inner south in Louise's area that she'll talk about. And at the same time, the state government is using our levers as well to try to address this as well. So we've announced that we are unlocking new no-interest loans for aged care providers as well. So that will be released very shortly, and that will be another incentive for aged care providers to be able to invest in the capital that they need to unlock these projects and release more beds.
And as well as that, we've changed the planning laws last year, changed through the health acts that I took through, to enable us to be able to crown-sponsor aged care developments through the planning process, to make that process as easy as possible. And just in the past couple of months, Minister Boyer has approved the first two of those projects – big new aged care developments in North Adelaide and in the eastern suburbs that will make that planning process easier and make sure that we can unlock these beds, which are so critically needed, for our ageing population, and to unlock those beds in hospitals for people who otherwise don't need to be in there, and to make sure people can come through the ED and get the treatment that they need. So I'll pass over to Louise Miller-Frost and then we’re happy to take questions.
LOUISE MILLER-FROST, MEMBER FOR BOOTHBY: Thank you, Minister. So of the 268 beds, 170 of them are going to be in Boothby. So I'm really thrilled that we're having an additional 20 beds that are going into Pennwood at Kings Park, and then very excitingly, a new facility in Dover Gardens through ACH will have another 150 beds. That will be on the site of what was formerly the Dover Gardens Primary School. People have been asking me for years, what are we doing with this land? It's been sitting dead for a very long time. I know that locals in that area will be thrilled to know that finally we will be having a first-class, brand-new aged care facility going into that area.
We have an ageing population in Adelaide and in the southern suburbs, and to be able to have these facilities locally so that when people need an aged care bed, they can be somewhere close to their home so their family and friends can visit them and they can be in their local environment, is a really important part of the quality that we can provide to all the people as they're ageing. So I'm really thrilled that we're able to have this. I can't wait to have the first sod turn for that Dover Gardens facility, but this will be a really important step forward not only for the aged care system, but as Chris also said, for the health system because we actually need that flow-through so that we can ensure that we do have people getting the care they need in the place they need. Thank you.
RAE: All right. I think we’re happy to take some questions.
JOURNALIST: What would be the timeline on these? When do you think these beds will be in the system?
RAE: Well, we only announced this program three months ago in March, and so the assessment process has been very rapid already and we worked really closely with providers, such as the team here, to make sure that we get the best projects invested in. The aim is to turn these projects around within two years. So, already, projects such as this one are pretty advanced in terms of their planning and consideration. Now, construction timelines are what they are, so I don't want to mislead people or be too silly about that. But our aim is to get these 268 beds on as soon as possible and ideally within two years.
JOURNALIST: 453 beds are currently being taken up. This is around about half. Is this anywhere near enough to ease the issue?
RAE: You're talking about the issue of longer stay older patients and delayed discharge within the hospital system. This is a really long standing and complex issue, and I absolutely pay tribute and thank the South Australian Government amongst other state and territory governments for their constructive engagement in this. Minister Picton and I, and more recently Minister Boyer and I, have done a lot of work and spoken very regularly about this challenge.
Now, there are some instances in which hospitals are the best place for some older people to be, where that is the appropriate clinical care. However, we absolutely know that there are people who are staying in hospital longer than they should be where it's not the ideal clinical setting, and we need to make sure that the aged care system can respond to that demand. That's what a program like this is all about. We knew that we had a particular issue here in metropolitan Adelaide. The State Government had identified that, we had identified that. That's why the partnership was important. Adelaide is one of only four places that are being funded through this particular round, the other one being the Illawarra, the Hunter in New South Wales as well as metropolitan Perth.
There is no one single answer to this challenge. It's a generational challenge. We've got to continue to reform the aged care sector. We've got to continue to invest in residential aged care capacity. And we're going to continue to invest in in-home care. This is not one thing, it's not the only thing. This is part of a broader suite of reforms that we're implementing and a broader set of investments that we're pursuing in order to meet that increased demand.
JOURNALIST: So will there be more rounds of funding after this one?
RAE: We've already invested a billion dollars in this ACAP program over the last four years, and there will absolutely be more to come.
JOURNALIST: How are we going to look at staffing then? It's all very well to build the beds, but we're hearing from the whole health sector it's really hard to get staff and keep them. So how are we looking at that to reduce red tape?
RAE: It's a good question. The dynamics around workforce are different in different areas. I was just chatting to Dominique and she was telling me that Registered Nurses are particularly challenging for them to find here. And of course, under the federal reforms we require Registered Nurses in aged care 24/7. But personal care workers, they've got a steady supply of really high quality, highly trained personal care workers. So the dynamics do change from place to place. We have to ensure that we're investing in our skills sector to make sure that people are getting the skills they want coming through. They run special scholarships, as an example, so that workers across the aged care sector and nurses particularly can upskill. Maybe enrolled nurses want to upskill to registered nurses, or personal care workers want to finish their nursing degree, So it's about investing in that pipeline of skills. So we've got these amazing human beings that work across the sector coming through and being supported to have the careers we need them to have.
JOURNALIST: Last week at the National Press Club, the Aged Care Inspector-General told them that the way that aged care reforms were being implemented at the moment are causing harm to older people, but also costing the taxpayer. Have you sought to meet with her since?
RAE: I'll let the Inspector-General speak for herself and her own views. As I said, there's no simple answer to this problem. This is a generational challenge that we face. This year, 90,000 Australians will have an 80th birthday. The 80th birthday is sort of a marker that policy makers use to identify what demand looks like in the aged care system. Now, 15 years ago, Mark Butler was the Health Minister. He created a generational plan for ensuring that the system could respond to baby boomers ageing to an ageing population overall.
Unfortunately, I don't want to be too partisan about it, but unfortunately, the Liberals, when they got into government, they cut that plan, they cut funding to the aged care sector. And as we all know, ultimately, their neglect of the sector resulted in a Royal Commission, and that Royal Commission issued a report with a single word, neglect, as the name of that report.
So since we were elected in 2022, we've made very clear that the rights of older people and the capacity of our aged care system to respond to our universal belief that people deserve high quality, dignified care, would be a critical priority for our government. We’ve invested in the residential aged care system. By the end of this financial year, we will have 420,000 people receiving care under our Support at Home program, care in their homes, in their communities, close to family, close to their support structures. That will have tripled since 2020. So, these are historic investments alongside the new Aged Care Act, and of course a statement of rights enshrined in that as well. These are the biggest reforms that have ever happened in aged care in our country.
JOURNALIST: These comments though are pretty critical of those reforms. Have you sought to meet with the Inspector-General since she has said those? Do you have any on- any plan to meet with her on the agenda?
RAE: I've met with the Inspector-General many times, and I'm aware of her comments, I'm aware of her views. As I said, my focus is on making sure that we get the very best outcomes for older people.
JOURNALIST: When will you complete the rapid review into the algorithm assisted assessment tool?
RAE: Well, we set a three month timeframe for that rapid review, and that's ongoing at the moment. I don't want to pre-empt the decisions or the ideas that come out of that process. There’s a very robust policy consideration process, as there should be through that work. We want to, again, make sure that the prioritisation components of the single assessment system are the very best that they can be to get the best care outcomes for older people across the community.
JOURNALIST: Can you just explain what makes us a hotspot? Is it just the fact that there are so many people waiting for aged care beds? Like, what's the criteria there to determine that we are a hotspot here in Adelaide?
RAE: There’s a range of different criteria and there's a range of different ways to look at that, and Minister Picton might have some input on this when he speaks as well. Yes, demand is a critical component of thinking about that. The way that our capital assistance program has worked historically, I should say, has also played into that. What we've identified though is that we’ve got these four locations around the country that had become, perhaps it's an overly graphic description, but quite ‘constipated’ in terms of the way that investment was flowing into them. We just weren't seeing the sector able to meet the financial demands of bringing these new projects online within the timeframe that we wanted them to come online. We say regularly, we need about 10,000 new units of residential aged care every single year nationally, and last year we got about 800. So we've got a big gap that we need to fill here. Programs like this are not designed to solve the problem in and of themselves. This is about partnership – the Federal government, South Australian Government and the amazing sector that we've got here in South Australia and here in Adelaide, working together. As I said, we've unlocked $134 million of investment and 268 beds through these investments, so it's a very good return on investment for the taxpayer. And it’s obviously a great outcome for older people in the community.
JOURNALIST: Can I just grab you on a separate topic – do you support increasing taxes on Australian gas exports?
RAE: This is obviously a matter that's getting a lot of discussion at the moment. We've got the ALP National Conference, here in Adelaide this week. I think there's going to be some discussion there. Our focus is on making sure that we've got a resilient fuel and energy industry to meet the demands of Australians, and of course keeping the prices down wherever we can. We’ve made announcements around our gas reservation policy. There'll be some more discussions this week at the national conference. I'm only one of 400-odd delegates there, so it'll be interesting to see hear what other delegates have to say.
JOURNALIST: But if it came to a vote at the conference, where would you stand?
RAE: I'm a member of the government and I'm a member of the ministry in the Albanese Government, I'm very proud to be. Our position is very clear. We are focused on ensuring that we get the best possible energy prices for Australians, that we've got a resilient energy grid. That’s what we’ll continue to focus on, and our gas reservation plan is a critical component of that.