I speak on behalf of Family First in support of Ms Lee Rhiannon’s motion. The Federal Government is constantly talking about the need to gain better facilities for our increasing population. Federally we are faced with a recommended inquiry into the expected increase in population by 2035 and the increased number of persons living in Australia over the age of 65 years. We all know the demographics. We all know we have more and more people living in this country, the greater percentage of which are becoming older as the baby boomers reach old age. An increased percentage of people are living longer, due to good health care, but are suffering increased health problems, particularly those over the age of 75 years. The closure of State-owned nursing homes and the desire of the Government to get the not-for-profit sector engaged in running nursing homes is a real trap. In order to get money from the private sector and to boost its own funds the Government is selling off all kinds of assets. Among those assets are government-owned nursing homes.<\/p>\n
The Hon. Robert Brown spoke of the local capital funding of $750,000 that went into the Carramar nursing home. For many years I ran half a dozen different nursing homes, retirement centres and villages for more than 1,5000 people and I know that the capital cost is the least cost put into the ongoing running of nursing homes. The capital cost is less than half of what a community will put into the ongoing running of nursing homes. This will involve the use of volunteers and a number of persons involved in fundraising committees to raise money for the purchase of ongoing facilities to make elderly people more comfortable in their nursing home or respite care beds. The Government wants to flick past the local support, volunteers and fundraising to the not-for-profit sector. When the not-for-profit sector takes over a nursing home such as Carramar it will not mean that Government support will continue—<\/p>\n
Every move to get rid of a local nursing home to the not-for-profit sector does not mean that costs of the nursing home evaporate. The costs go to the not-for-profit sector, which means the organisation running the nursing home has to develop local community fundraising. Therefore if a not-for-profit sector decided to accept this sale it would have to immediately set up fundraising in the Leeton area to support the ongoing work of Carramar.<\/p>\n
Maintenance and upgrading, and the rebuilding of nursing homes where necessary are major issues. All 10 nursing homes that the Government has been seeking to offload are reaching the end of their viable life, which will mean relocation and total reconstruction, which will cost a major amount of money. Aged care facilities face constantly changing government regulations to improve the safety, security and wellbeing of residents, and that means the upgrading of nursing homes from fire prevention measures to extending the width of doorways to entrances and shower facilities. All those things have to be upgraded. The only way the not-for-profit sector can get money to do this work is to raise it in the local community. The Government will not provide the money; local people will be urged to put more money into the upgrading of facilities in the aged care sector.<\/p>\n
The Minister for Health must meet with the community members and carers who have come to Parliament House today. I congratulate them on their energy in coming here. I am concerned not only with the Leeton and Wallsend nursing homes, which we debated two weeks ago, but all 10 State nursing homes. If they are sold to private operators in the for-profit sector—who realise the changing demographics, which the Government seems to ignore, and the increasing demand for nursing home and respite beds in the future—fees will increase. Nursing homes such as Carramar accept concessional patients. Usually concessional patients cannot afford to pay additional fees and increases. The only way a for-profit organisation can gain money to upgrade facilities is by increasing fees. That is also the case in respect of respite beds.<\/p>\n
Often, patients who do not have family, friends or support people who can pay the fees require respite beds. The net result is that the State Government avoids its responsibility of care for the aged by passing it on to either the not for-profit sector whose only resource of getting money is from the local community or the for-profit sector whose only way to gain income is from the patients. The Government says it wants to continue quality care. The only way the Government can continue to provide quality care is to ensure that the Government funds it. I support the Greens motion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I speak on behalf of Family First in support of Ms Lee Rhiannon’s motion. The Federal Government is constantly talking about the need to gain better facilities for our increasing population. Federally we are faced with a recommended inquiry into the expected increase in population by 2035 and the increased number of persons living in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}