industry & reform
Inspiration or despair ?
The challenge of the new federal government ’ s first Bill .
By Michael Fine
It is easy to be cynical about the new Australian government ’ s very first legislative bill to receive the endorsement of both houses .
The Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment ( Royal Commission Response ) Bill 2022 , passed on 2 August , was claimed by no less than the Prime Minister to be both a symbol of the government ’ s intention to deliver promises made in the election , and the beginning of a process of real repair and reform .
More legislation is promised . And importantly , the move to introduce the Support at Home Program ( SAH ) to replace the CHSP and Home Care programs has been held back until 2024 while the entire scheme is reviewed and more extensive consultation has taken place .
Could this really be the inspirational first steps towards building a world class system from the base up ? Or is it just the naive response of an inexperienced new government , promising more than could possibly be delivered ?
Over the past decade , there have been many promises about the aged care system in Australia made by those charged with responsibility as the Minster for Ageing . Too often these policy announcements simply came to be understood as a form of political marketing . At worst , they came to be seen by those in the know as misleading and manipulative .
Changes to aged care provisions were often justified as providing consumers with greater choice and better quality of care . Few , if any , changes were claimed to benefit staff . While
“ This is not the
time for despair . We need to rejoice and get to work . the new policies promised families and those who relied on support that glittering ideals such as ‘ consumer directed care ’ would provide new standards of responsiveness and personal attention , waiting lists for home care grew and the quality of care become less and less certain .
It became impossible for any of us with a serious commitment to quality care to believe the promises . Slowly but consistently , the already poor wages and conditions for those who worked at providing personal care deteriorated .
So , given the tightened circumstances under which the new government will have to operate , could that possibly change ? That ’ s certainly the promise . Yet there is so much to do before we could be confident that Australians can feel confident about the system of care in the twenty-first century . And so many conflicting opinions about how it could be achieved .
The public clearly have high expectations . Can politicians possibly help us meet them ? Here is not the place to go through the policy evidence in detail . Nor can I review the reams of scientific , legal , statistical and economic data necessary to test ambitious claims . But evidence from at least two other major sources suggest that there are sound reasons for optimism and hope . First , a quick historical check shows that changes of this magnitude have already been achieved at least once before in this country .
The problems of the aged care system in the 1970s and 80s in Australia were eerily similar to those experienced today . In the face of similar cynicism and doubt , reforms made under the Hawke and Keating governments were introduced that were able to reset and redesign the system .
10 agedcareinsite . com . au