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After months of painstaking negotiations, the government has secured bipartisan support to overhaul Australia’s aged care system.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the aim is to have more Australians live at home as they get older, but paying more for the care they receive there.
“We know that that increasingly, as they age, Australians want to spend more time living at home. As a result of the reforms that we’re announcing today, around 1.4 million Australians will benefit from a new support at home program by 2035.”
The centrepiece to the bill is a new Support at Home program, which promises shorter wait times and more tailored support.
It begins from the 1st of July next year, with a $4.3 billion spend by government to set it up.
The government will pay for all clinical care, whilst independence and every day living costs will be means tested.
There’s a lifetime cap of $130,000, to be indexed each year, limiting the total cost an individual will pay for care – a significant increase from the $80,000 cap currently in place.
Opposition Aged Care spokesperson Anne Ruston says the higher price tag is worth it, believing it will improve the sector.
“Every Australian, under this particular package, is sought to pay a little bit more towards their care. But what was most important was to make sure that we had a sector that wasn’t just here for today, but to make sure that it was here for future generations of Australians who will need aged care.”
For residential aged care, a similar means-tested approach will apply, with wealthier Australians contributing more to their care.
There will be minor adjustments to the way refundable accommodation deposits work, increasing the maximum charge per room without special approval to $750,000, and allowing providers to keep two per cent of the deposit for up to five years.
Chief Executive of the Aged and Community Care Providers Association, Tom Symondson ((simon-son)), says the changes will help a struggling sector.
“We have a sector on its knees. We’re supposed to be building 10,000 new beds of residential care every year for the next 20 years, and we’re building none. We’re closing more than we’re opening. We’ve got people waiting over a year for home care, and many of those people, unfortunately, they either end up in hospital or in residential care sooner than they should, or they pass away before they can ever receive services. That is not a system that is in a good state. So these reforms should resolve, not overnight, but they should resolve those problems, and then older people can have confidence in our system again.”
All changes are covered by a no-worse-off principle, so anyone already in care won’t pay more.
Aged care will cost taxpayers 36 billion dollars this year – with the changes designed to save 12.6 billion dollars over eleven years.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says it will make the system more sustainable.
“This is about better care for more people, in a more sustainable way. It’s not about new taxes and it’s not about changing the treatment of the family home.”
The fundamental challenge facing aged care into the future is a chronic shortage of workers – with those strains only set to grow as the population aged over 85 triples in the next four decades.
Mr Symondson says a better system should help attract workers into the sector.
“We need 100,000 more workers across the whole aged care system over the next few decades. So, we are nowhere near where we need to be with staffing. Things are slowly improving. We have had significant pay increases for workers in aged care. We saw 15 per cent last year for many workers, and we’ve seen more increases this year. That’s really good. The government’s funded those increases, so we’re in a good place from a pay perspective, compared to the past, but there just aren’t enough people who want to work in aged care. One of the things this legislation does, is it’s supposed to give confidence back to the community. There are new accountabilities, human rights of older people are in the act. They’re not even mentioned in the current act that dates back to 1997 and we hope that will give people confidence to make their careers with aged care.”
And he believes the bill will create lasting change.
“Finally, we have an agreement to do something genuinely brave, to make older people confident that they can get the care and support they need, not just today, but 10 and 20 years into the future. And I think that’s a fantastic achievement.”
