Extract from The Guardian
Federal Labor leader says if Australians want higher standards in aged care ‘we need to support higher wages for our carers’
Thu 31 Mar 2022 19.31 AEDT
Last modified on Thu 31 Mar 2022 20.23 AEDTThe federal opposition leader used his budget reply speech on Thursday night – a set-piece that followed a historic address to the Australian parliament by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – to outbid the Morrison government on the policy response to the royal commission into aged care quality and safety.
Albanese told parliament if Labor wins the May election, his new government would fund a wage increase for aged care workers and require residential aged care facilities to have a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Unions are seeking pay rises of 25% for more than 200,000 aged care workers. The starting rate for a personal carer is currently $21.96 an hour – just $2 higher than the national minimum wage.
Albanese said if Australians wanted higher standards in aged care “we need to support higher wages for our carers”.
The $2.5bn policy costing – over four years – unveiled by Labor on Thursday night does not include earmarked expenditure for an as-yet-undetermined pay increase that would be delivered to providers in the form of increased subsidies.
As well as backing a pay rise for the aged care workforce, Albanese said Labor would work to raise the standard of care by implementing the recommendation of the aged care royal commission requiring that elderly people receive a minimum of 215 minutes of care a day.
He said he would work with the aged care sector to develop and implement mandatory nutrition standards to ensure every resident gets decent food. Labor would also give enhanced power to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner to require facilities to provide detailed reports of their expenditure.
Albanese said on Thursday night Australians had been “chilled by stories of unforgivable neglect – maggots in wounds, people going days without fresh air, a shower, or a change of clothes, stories of residents lying on the floor, crying out in pain, and nobody is there to help them”.
The Labor leader declared the Liberals “had a decade to do something about aged care” but the Morrison government’s response to the royal commission did not go far enough.
Last year, the Morrison government unveiled a $17.7bn package to reform the scandal-plagued aged care system. The reforms aimed to clear the home care waiting list within two years and boost the aged care workforce.
But advocates have argued $10bn a year is needed to bring the sector up to scratch, and unions and providers expressed disappointment after Tuesday night’s budget that the Coalition did not earmark funds for a pay increase for workers. The Coalition has offered aged care workers pre-election bonus payments worth up to $800.
Albanese said if Morrison won the election, “nothing will change – and the bleak present they have created will be the bleak future awaiting so many more Australians”.
He said the Morrison government’s budget was not a plan for the country but a “bunch of last-minute, one-off handouts for problems that have been a decade in the making” and a collection of promises with “a use-by date – conveniently after the election”.
Albanese said the prime minister had handed down a budget for the next six weeks, “when we need a plan for the next six years”.
He said Tuesday night’s budget exemplified “a wasted decade” and predicted voters would see the pre-election economic statement “for what it is”. Referencing language used by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, when he accused the prime minister of lying to him over the cancellation of a $90bn submarine contract, Albanese added: “Actually, I don’t think, I know.”
Albanese said the coming election contest was not about the future of the Coalition it was about the future of the country.
“I went into politics because I believe good government can change the lives of Australians for the better,” he said.
“Reaching out to those who’ve fallen back, and creating opportunities that make it possible to get ahead, to be the best we can be.”
He said he wanted to lead a country that gave its citizens “the chance to follow their dreams, to study what they want, to learn the trade or get the job they want, to buy a home, to start a family”.
“An Australia of boundless opportunity,” he said. “An inclusive Australia that celebrates our rich diversity and values our multiculturalism as an asset. An Australia that embraces the generous Uluru Statement from the Heart, including a constitutionally recognised Indigenous voice to parliament.”
He said if voters gave him the honour of the prime ministership, he would “act with integrity, lead with responsibility – and treat you with respect”.
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