: Good afternoon. Today we are putting the care back into aged care. We’re announcing the greatest improvement in aged care in 30 years. At the heart of our Government’s aged care reforms are a simple set of principles – providing dignity, choice, respect and quality of care to older Australians. More Australians are living longer, and that’s a good thing. But I know that older Australians worry about going into aged care, and I know that their children and grandchildren worry about it too. This is about caring for the generation that cared for us. Older Australians built this country, they shaped our economy, they did the hard yards. They embody the strength and the spirit of our nation. We will deliver historic aged care reforms to ensure the viability and quality of our aged care system and support the growing number of older Australians choosing to retain their independence and remain in their homes as they age. We know 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, helping them remain independent in their home and their community for longer, $5.6 billion will be invested in a reform package which includes these major changes. $4.3 billion invested in support at home to come into effect on the 1 July next year. Changes to improve the funding, viability and quality of residential aged care, including providing certainty that nobody already in aged care will be asked to contribute more to the cost of their care. And thirdly, new laws to protect older Australians in aged care with stronger powers to investigate bad behaviour and civil penalties for breaching standards. Reforms like this don’t happen every day. They are once in a generation and this is very significant. I do want to thank the Opposition for their constructive engagement in this process. I’d like to recognise as well the extraordinary hard work of Anika Wells as the Minister, supported by Mark Butler as the Health Minister, and our economic Ministers, of course, as well, Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher, the Minister.
MINISTER ANIKA WELLS: Thank you, PM. Thank you, Treasurer. Thank you to the Health Minister, the Aged Care Taskforce members and the shadow Health Minister, Senator Ruston, for her bipartisan support. Today is an historic moment for aged care for older Australians and those of us who love them. Just over a year ago, I went to the ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Press Club to map out the stark cliff facing aged care if we did not take drastic action. And I said, I don’t want Australians to be scared about the care that they will be provided later in life. To accomplish that, we had to answer the question, Royal Commissioners could not agree upon: how to make aged care equitable and sustainable? Today, we answer that question. Today we announce a needs based arrangement that makes financial sense, a system that helps more homes, have more services for older Australians. Our reforms will create better and safer care, help reduce the fear of a system that has been neglected for far too long. I’ve always been ambitious for aged care and today, with the support of so many, we amplify our ambition with these measures representing the greatest reforms to aged care in 30 years. We will introduce a new Aged Care Act to parliament today. This reform is a $5.6 billion package, including $4.3 billion in a new system of home care called Support at ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾. This new home care program will come into effect from the 1 July 2025 and will reduce wait times for in home care, with a target of three months by July 2027. Several principles underpin these reforms. Australians will get the support they need and make a reasonable contribution according to their means, as the task force recommended. A no worse off principle will provide certainty to people already in aged care, and they won’t make a greater contribution to their care. The government will pay one hundred percent of clinical care costs, with individuals contributing to the kinds of costs they would typically pay throughout their lives. The government will continue to pay the majority of aged care costs. Without structural change, we will not be able to sustain the level of care older Australians deserve. It is that simple. The government has already made significant investments to improve aged care, $11.3 billion to lift the award wage for workers by fifteen percent, 24/7 nursing legislation that sees registered nurses on site 99% of the time and care minutes increasing to an extra 3.9 million extra minutes of care every single day for residents. These reforms are the next step in lifting the quality of aged care. Many things will change, but some important things won’t. The family home won’t be treated any different than it is now. There will not be a levy. Government investment in aged care will rise year on year. So, what will change? Australians will have an entirely new way to receive care – support at home. Some of the benefits of the $4.3 billion Support at ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ package include support for 300,000 more participants in the next 10 years. Shorter average wait times from assessment to receive support. More tailored support with eight ongoing classifications all the way up to almost $78,000 a year. Support for home modifications with up to $15,000 to make your home safer, and faster access to assistive technology like walkers or wheelchairs. On 1 July 2025, everyone with a home care package or on the national priority system will move to the new Support at ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ program, maintaining their level of funding and retaining any unspent funds. The no worse off principle will ensure everyone with a home care package on the national priority system, or assessed as eligible for a package as of today, will make the same contributions or lower as they would have under home care arrangements. By 2050, the residential aged care sector will need $56 billion in capital funding to upgrade existing aged care rooms and build new rooms for growing numbers of older Australians. Providers have repeatedly told us they have new facilities, they have new wings, they have renovations costed and ready to be built once they have sustainable funding. So, we are implementing a series of changes. As recommended by the Aged Care Taskforce, these measures include new means tested contributions for new entrants, a higher maximum route price indexed over time and the retention of a small portion of refundable accommodation deposits by providers. From 1 July 2025 providers will retain 2% of each new refundable accommodation deposit each year for up to five years. The government will review the accommodation supplement settings over the next two years and consider phasing out RADS from 2035, subject to an independent review. There will be no change to the contributions or RADS for those already in residential aged care before the 1 July 2025. Our generational reforms are a major element of the new Aged Care act that will modernise a byzantine system to be future facing. The 1997 Aged Care Act was put in place with the primary focus of how to fund aged care providers. But our new Act was going to put the people at the heart of care. The Aged Care bill implements a number of election commitments, such as mandatory aged care, food standards, statutory duty of care for registered providers of aged care workers, screening and stronger investigative powers for the regulator. When we came to government, the PM wanted to put the care back into aged care, and so he appointed a former aged care worker to be the Minister. And it was 20 years ago now, but I still remember Peg and Dorothy and the people on my tea trolley rounds. I remember how it made their day if I had their preferred afternoon tea. I remember the effect that it had on them if a loved one cancelled a scheduled visit. And I wish I could have told them that everything they said to that teenager in a dish cap would one day contribute to generational care reforms for their children and their children’s children. Because it is a real privilege to work in aged care, it is some of the most meaningful work you could ever hope to do and it’s been an honour to return to this sector and to have this opportunity as a Minister to bring it out of the shadows and into the light, and to prepare it for a future that all older Australians can rely on without any more fear.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, Anika, the Treasurer.
TREASURER JIM CHALMERS: Thanks, PM. It’s a real tribute to Anika and to Mark Butler, the PM and the Finance Minister that were in this position to make this announcement today. This is the outcome of years of work from Anika and months of negotiations. This is how we fund the care that Australians need and deserve. 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. Now, it’s a very good thing that Australians are living longer and healthier lives, and this is how we meet the rising costs of their care. And our thinking here has been guided by the conclusions of the intergenerational report. Now, the number of people in home care has increased more than four times in just 10 years. Over the next 40 years, the number of people over 65 will double and people over 85 will triple. The government spending in aged care over that period is expected to double as a share of the economy. And that makes it one of the fastest growing areas of government spending, along with health, NDIS, defence and interest costs on debt. Now, together, those big five spending pressures that Katy Gallagher and I talk about frequently were expected to grow from 8.8 to 14.4% of GDP over the period analysed in the intergenerational report. We’ve made really substantial progress on interest costs because of those two surpluses. We’ve made progress on the NDIS and defence, and today we make further progress when it comes to aged care. And our approach has been to deliver a couple of big surpluses in the near term without ignoring our responsibilities to deal with some of the structural issues in the budget at the same time. This is how we improve aged care and strengthen the budget at the same time. It’s a step change in care and it’s a meaningful structural reform in the budget at the same time. It’s a combination of new investments and new contributions, but with generous transitional arrangements, it shows that we can still grow investment in aged care. We can still be the main funder when it comes to aged care, but to make it more sustainable. Now the net impact of the changes is expected to be a $930 million spend over four years, but a $12.6 billion save over the next 10 years. Aged care spending will continue to grow, but at an average of 5.2%, not 5.7%, over the next decade. And that means as a share of GDP, over the next decade, it will moderate from 1.5% of the economy to 1.4%, even with more people in the system and a higher standard of care at the same time. Now we made a conservative provision for these changes in the budget while we negotiated with the Opposition. And we will publish the detailed measures and financial impacts in the usual way in the mid year budget update. This is all about better care for more people in a more sustainable way. It’s a really important economic reform that we’re announcing today. It’s a credit to Anika and Mark and the PM and the government, but also the parliament.
PRIME MINISTER: Okay, we’ll go to Phil, then David, then here.
JOURNALIST: The net savings said 12.6 over debt. The cost of aged care last year, I think, was about $36 billion. In your original proposal, you wanted to have a lifetime cap (inaudible)…
MINISTER WELLS: What I wanted was to introduce a new aged care act to the parliament and bring in the most transformational change to the sector. And as you can see, months of negotiation, incredibly rare bipartisan accord on something so important. This is where we landed.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, does this mean that part, pensioners and self funded retirees will have to pay more in the future than otherwise for their care and residential aged care? And if that’s the case, why is that fair?
PRIME MINISTER: What we’re doing is making sure that the system is sustainable going forward. We’ve been working with providers, we’ve worked across the parliament in a constructive way to make sure that aged care residents can get the attention and the respect and the care that they deserve. But also a really important part of this package is that we’ve been listening and more Australians want to spend more time at home with their community where they’re engaged, and these reforms will enable that to happen.
JOURNALIST: Part of the bill, a lot of people in part of them still have concerns. There’s a sense of maybe there’s still (inaudible) Are you ready for other changes? Is there going to be other changes to the bill after the Senate reports back after this (inaudible)…
MINISTER WELLS: Well, what I’m looking forward to is introducing this to the house, which we will do today, and then it will go off to a Senate inquiry process. And I leave it to my friends in the other place. It’s a parliamentary process. You know, there’s a lot of people that have a stake in securing the future of aged care and we welcome that process.
PRIME MINISTER: One of the things that today we’re clearly announcing, though, is the bipartisan support across the board for the main elements of this legislation. Mark and then Charles?
JOURNALIST: On the retention of deposits at the new cap of $750,000, it’s about $75,000, for a new entrant to residential age care. Will that act is deterrent against families opting to put elderly relatives into residential care?
MINISTER WELLS: Well, in my experience in aged care to date, the question of whether someone needs to go into residential aged care is a question of need. It’s not something people that look forward to. And after the stories that we heard in the Royal Commission, I’ve heard too many times over the past two years that it’s something that people dread, that people actively avoid. So, what’s important about today is that we are regearing the entire system of aged care in this country to be about supporting you at home and keeping you independent and supported at home for as long as possible. So, that’s what these reforms do.
PRIME MINISTER: Charles and then David and then we’ve probably got to go to question time.
JOURNALIST: One of the big changes is shortening the waiting time. How do you do that and how many staff or extra staff have to be trained to carry out that?
MINISTER WELLS: So, that’s from the 1 July 2025 next year. That means hundreds of thousands of new packages will be online. Better services for people. The support at home regime goes from four package levels available today, up to eight ongoing package levels as of 1 July 2025. But some really important new elements to support at home transitional care. So, if you have a fall, we’re trying to get you in and out of hospital as quickly as possible and get those allied health supports you at home, and then palliative care, which is a really important new one. People have been asking the Federal Government to look at this for so many years now. We’re going to pay $25,000 for the last 12 weeks of palliative care to get you out of hospital and spending that time at home with your loved ones.
PRIME MINISTER: David. David to bring it home.
JOURNALIST: Just on one of the case studies you’ve given here, Marco is a part pensioner class five package, home support package. You need to explain so people understand what extra costs does Marco face under these changes?
MINISTER WELLS: So, Marco will have to have a clinical assessment and that will drive everything that comes from it. The reason that this support at home, one of the reasons that support at home is so good is it’s an individualised system, so the cost of your care looks different to everyone because your clinically assessed need looks different to everyone and what kinds of clinical care supports you need to stay at home as long as possible is going to look different to your neighbours, just the same as the kind of supports you need to stay independent at home as possible. And the everyday services that you need at home will look different. It’ll be a different mix of services for everybody. And that’s why we’ve got fact sheets and case studies online for people to have a look at tonight.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much. See you at question time. Thank you.
