JOANNE RYAN, MEMBER FOR LALOR: I'd like to welcome Minister Sam Rae to the beautiful suburb of Tarneit in the shadow of the Julia Gillard Library, can you believe it. Here at our aged care facility, and a big welcome, a big thank you to Tim for opening up today where we met some wonderful local residents of the seat of Lalor. Of course, it’s 1 November and today we look at the new changes, the new regime around aged care. I'd like to introduce Sam Rae. Welcome Minister.
SAM RAE, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SENIORS: Thank you very much, Jo. It is fantastic to be here in Tarneit at Sunset Views. We've had a great morning wandering around. Tim and the team have done a great job of hosting us. We got to get around and see some of the residents and what they get up to on their Saturday mornings. It's fair to say that some of you here could learn from their keenness to get up and embrace the day. But it has been a great morning and of course as Jo said, today is 1 November. It's a really important day for older people all across Australia. Today the new Aged Care Act begins. This is not the beginning of the reform process to aged care in our country, and it's not the end, but it is certainly a very significant step forward.
For the first time, older people in our country will have a Statement of Rights that legally enshrines their right to safe, dignified and high quality aged care. And of course we're seeing that being delivered in residential aged care facilities such as this one. We're also beginning, as of today, our new Support at Home program, the updated program that allows older people to stay in their homes and in their communities for as long as possible with the right level of support and care in place in order to make sure that they are leading dignified and, indeed, joyful lives. It's a fantastic day for older people, it's a fantastic day for their families and their loved ones. I pay tribute to the workers and the providers all across the sector who have worked diligently over the last months and years in order to prepare for these historic changes.
Tim and his team, I know, will have been part of that significant effort of work. I think we just need to understand some of the context of how we get to here. Of course, under the Morrison Liberal government, things had gotten so bad in the aged care sector that there was a Royal Commission that mononymously issued a report titled Neglect. When the Labor Government was elected in 2022, Anthony Albanese made very clear that historic reform to the aged care sector was a key priority for our Government. We have already seen significant advancement. We have registered nurses in aged care facilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And we have been providing an additional 7.1 million additional minutes of care to older people every single day. The beginning of the new Act is the Statement of Rights. It's the Support at Home program, but it sets up our aged care system for the challenges of the future including an ageing population and rightly evolving expectations of what aged care looks like in our community.
Again, I pay tribute to the workers and providers, I pay tribute to the regulators and the representatives of the Government who worked hard to make this a reality. But most of all, I pay tribute to older people. Older people who have waited for this change, who have patiently advocated and who have engaged so proactively and so constructively in order to help us take this next step as we move forward into a stronger future for aged care and a better set of outcomes for older people and their families across our community.
On that note, I'm going to throw over to Tim to offer a few words and then we'll take some questions.
TIM HUMPHRIES, CEO OF HOMESTYLE AGED CARE: Thank you both. It's a real pleasure to have you here today and I hope that you got to see what aged care looks like now. You got to meet some wonderful residents. You got to meet some amazing team members. And from where I sit, we're fortunate to have great teams working with us. And we're fortunate to care for wonderful residents, and I think you all got to see that today, and I'm glad that you got to film it. And I hope that everyone who sees it today actually really gets to see some happy older people, which is exactly what the new Act's about. Thank you.
RAE: Thanks Tim. Happy to take some questions.
JOURNALIST: Providers working under the Support at Home scheme, what measures are in place to make sure they don't increase their fees before the caps are introduced in July next year?
RAE: Under Support at Home, there is a co-contribution model. Now, the Federal Government will continue to pay 100 per cent of clinical care for every single person. But we do want our Support at Home system to be sustainable and we want it to be accessible for every single Australian and that's what the co-contribution model is about. What we've done though is we have capped administration fees. We were seeing previously under the old Home Care Packages program administration fees sometimes being as high as 30 to 40 per cent of people's care budgets. We have now capped administration fees. The providers are obligated to publish their prices so that there is transparency of prices for older people, for their families and for advocates. There is a pricing guidance list that's been issued by the Department and the independent pricing regulator will impose price caps from July next year as well.
JOURNALIST: Do you think it's fair though that they might have to be forking out for personal care services including showering and wound dressing?
RAE: The care types have been divided into three different categories. The first is clinical care which by definition is delivered by either a nurse or someone with a university qualification, the clinical care has to be delivered by one of those types of carers, and all of that care is 100 per cent met by the government. There are modest co-contribution amounts for those who have the means to make co-contributions. For a full pensioner, that co-contribution amount for independence care is 5 per cent.
However, I want to make two key points. Anyone was in the system, either receiving in-home care or on the National Priority System list before September 2024, will have their financial arrangements grandparented and won't be subject to the co-contribution evolution. Anyone who comes onto the system since that period will also have some very strict guardrails in place to ensure continuity of care, including robust hardship revisions to make sure that if people are unable to make a co-contribution, it won't ever interrupt their care.
JOURNALIST: What do you say to older Australians who are considering suspending their packages because they think this new system gives them fewer services?
RAE: The new system gives more services. We have increased budgets available so that people can get better care, more tailored care. And they should, of course, if they are concerned about what these changes mean for them, if they haven't been able to get their heads around that, and that's understandable because this is a complex system. We have issued 600,000 personalised letters to older people over the last weeks to try and provide as much personalised information. We've held more than 50 public forums and discussions in every state and territory. We've had very significant traffic through our online resources as well. But if people are struggling to wrap their heads around what these changes mean for them, they should reach out to My Aged Care, either online or through our contact centres. And they should also keep in mind that the Older Persons Advocacy Network is always a resource available to them to help deal with some of the complexity of their spaces.
JOURNALIST: Are you sure that you've got that threshold right for the co-payments in terms of when people have to qualify for paying that payment? Are you open to considering any adjustment there?
RAE: The Support at Home categories and associated co-payment arrangements were put into place for extensive consultation and there was some incredible advice that was provided through the Transition Taskforce and from experts all across the sector. And again, the principle here is that we want every older person to be able to access safe, dignified and high-quality aged care. In order to do that, the system has to be sustainable and it has to be accessible.
So we're confident that we've got the balance right. Clinical care needs will continue to be met 100 per cent by the Government. But I'll be monitoring these circumstances very closely as we move forward and making whatever changes are necessary to get the best possible outcomes for older people.
JOURNALIST: How many packages are you funding between now and the end of the year?
RAE: So we're in the process, we're well into the process indeed actually, of rolling out an additional 83,000 packages of care this financial year alone. I'll make this point. Demand for home care has grown very rapidly. In the last five years we've seen demand double. We had five years ago about 150,000 people receiving home care. We've now got more than 300,000 people receiving home care. On top of that, an additional 83,000 packages of care being rolled out this financial year. These are the considerable steps we're making under our $4.3 billion Support at Home program to try and make sure that every older person can access that safe, dignified and high-quality aged care that I talked about.
JOURNALIST: In 23-24 I think the total cost of aged care was $36.4 billion. Do you have an idea maybe for 25-26, once these reforms are fully in place for a full year, how much the aged care budget will be?
RAE: The Treasury officials are a little loathe for me to single-handedly go forecasting the growth around a whole range of our health measures. But we have roughly a $40 billion expenditure in aged care from a Federal Government perspective. We want as many of those dollars as possible to be spent efficiently providing care for people, not getting sucked up through administration costs. It's why these administration caps under the new Support at Home system have been so important.
JOURNALIST: You're saying it's a great day for older Australians, more people wanting to live at home, stay at home, and that's what you're trying to sort of target with this. But does it mean that it's a good day for young Australians who are going to come through this process and having to pay more to stay at home in the future?
RAE: I think it's a great day for anyone who wants to see, as I said, that safe, dignified and high-quality care being applied in our community and to the people that we love. Older people are the people who ultimately build our communities. They're our grandparents, they're our parents. They've contributed so much to our country. They deserve that level of care. We do need to provide it on a sustainable basis and an accessible basis. We know demand is growing very rapidly. It's why we're making these adjustments to set up our aged care system long into the future.
JOURNALIST: Can I ask Tim a question? So, we had a look through your facility. It looks amazing, you've got some great things ready for everyone to be part of. Granularly, what does today actually change or mean for you?
HUMPHRIES: I think practically when you change a law as big as this one that was- the last act was 1997, this one's now 2024, it's a significant change. So procedurally we have to change all of our processes and that's been a big exercise, but let's not forget it's been going for nearly 18 months so we've had a long period of time to adjust to it. Are we completely perfect in our compliance with everything? No, we're not, and I don't think any provider is, but I think from here on we'll adjust and we'll fall in line with the intent of the Act more importantly, and I think the intent of the Act is the one thing that's worth highlighting. We have and always will put residents at the centre of all we do and the Act wants to do the same thing, so I think those are all good things and consistent with what we do.
JOURNALIST: Will there be any changes for the residents living here? Will they see any differences or anything like that?
HUMPHRIES: I hope the residents here see little to no change, to be honest, and I hope what you saw today, you would agree that changing anything here would be a bad idea.
RAE: Can I add to that for a second, Tim? As I said, this isn't the beginning of reform, and it's not the end of reform. And of course, what we want to be doing here is raising the standard overall of care everywhere across our country. Today is an important day, and it marks an important milestone, but for great providers such as Tim and the company that he represents and a facility like this, this is an evolution rather than a revolution today. The important part here is that there has been ongoing consultation, ongoing conversation and ongoing collaboration between older people, the sector and the Government to get to this point where we've been moving towards continued improvement. And I pay great tribute to the sector. Since the Royal Commission we've seen significant improvements to the care that's been delivered.
So today won't necessarily be the day that everything changes for people here and in fact that wouldn't be in their interests, that would be quite disruptive to their care and their quality of life, because the team here have been working towards an exceptional standard of care over a long period of time in collaboration with the Government and with the residents and with the families and I think we saw that today when we walked through here.
JOURNALIST: Just on another matter, Minister, the Nationals look like they're set to dump their net zero target tomorrow. What's your response to that?
RAE: Well, I will leave it for the Nationals to make decisions that they want to take to the Australian people. I think the reality for the Coalition in general is that they have rendered themselves irrelevant to this broader national debate. Australians want to see action on climate change and they want to see lower energy prices. The way to do that is a balanced approach to transitioning our energy system to renewables, the cheapest form of energy. We've made very clear that is a balanced and managed transition process that includes firming gas as part of that transition. I think Australians know when they look at both the Liberals and the Nationals that these guys have no idea when it comes to setting a policy that delivers on climate change, that delivers cheaper energy for households and for businesses and they've rendered themselves irrelevant to this debate entirely.
JOURNALIST: We heard news yesterday that AGL is looking to cut jobs. Is it worth having a discussion around the speed at which we're going towards net zero and also managing the impact on industry as well?
RAE: There's been a very careful roadmap laid out about the transition. As I said, it involves renewables and the growth in renewables, the transmission adjustments that need to come with that as well, while maintaining other forms of energy along the way, including using gas as a firming base for our energy grid.
JOURNALIST: But you can see that some jobs have been lost in this instance. How can you strike that balance?
RAE: Again, there's a clear roadmap about how we get to a more sustainable energy system and one that delivers cheaper and better pricing for homes and for businesses. I know that Chris Bowen, as the Energy Minister, will be working very closely with businesses across the country, as well as State and Territory Governments, to make sure that we get the best outcomes for homes, the best outcomes for businesses, and the best outcomes for workers across the energy industry.
JOURNALIST: Do you think there's any merit to the idea that support for net zero is waning amongst the public?
RAE: Absolutely not. As I said, Australians want to see action on climate change balanced with cheaper energy prices at home and at work. That is what our roadmap is focused on. Chris Bowen and his team have done exceptional work in this space. The industry, the energy industry, have been active participants and collaborators to make sure that we can build our renewable energy future, renewables being the cheapest form of new energy, while at the same time balancing the integrity of the grid using things like firming gas.
JOURNALIST: And the Government, you've recently introduced the bulk billing changes. Is that going to affect these residents here as well?
RAE: As the aged care minister, I always like to get as much focus on aged care. It's a bit of a selfish thing to do because older people deserve all the attention that they can get. But you're absolutely right, 1 November is an exciting day for another reason. Today marks the beginning of the tripling of bulk billing incentives for every single Australian. My colleague Mark Butler has done extraordinary work to put Medicare back onto a sustainable footing. We want to make sure that every Australian can go and see the GP, and by 2030, 9 out of 10 those visits will be bulk-filled visits. So we're bringing GPs back into communities. We're empowering them to continue to provide that critical primary health care. We're making sure that people can afford to visit them when they need to. Thanks guys.