“I would not want my Mum in some of those places”
Daniel Andrews, Media Conference,
29 July 2020
“The idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I won’t hear a word against them”
Greg Hunt, Media Conference,
30 July 2020
Political co-operation
Co-operation between a State Labor government and a federal Liberal-National government was a positive feature of the political class in the early days of the pandemic. The peace was first shattered at the end of July.
Side-swipe
Daniel Andrews’ side-swipe on 29 July at the quality of care in private nursing homes and implicitly at federal government regulation, was countered the next day by the federal Health Minister.
Heart-warming on the face of it
Greg Hunt’s indignant and passionate defense of those who provide hands on care in nursing homes was, on the face of it, heart-warming.
Hypocrisy
Since 2013 however, has the Government of which he is a part stood before the Fair Work Commission and supported wage increases for these employees? Has it taken any action to require improvements in staff numbers per shift or sought to mandate an increase in registered nurse hours as a proportion of total care hours? Has it tied funding to nursing homes to a wage increase? Has it supported transparency in expenditure on staffing and food in nursing home accounts? The answer is no.
We know the COVID catastrophe in aged care is not the fault of the non-managerial employees so whose fault is it Minister?
Psychic income
So we go from heart-warming to yet another example of a dose of the psychic income dispensed so cheaply by politicians to aged care employees.
Valuable action
In the past, the Andrews government has sought to improve aged care. In 2014, it committed to end the sell-off of public nursing homes to the private sector. In 2015, it legislated minimum staff-resident ratios in nursing. This made the ratios more secure than where they were in an industrial instrument. In 2018, it invested $56 million in a public 96 bed nursing home at St Georges Health Service in Kew.
“The idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I won’t hear a word against them”
Greg Hunt, Media Conference,
30 July 2020
Federal Labor not much better
At the federal level however, Labor has not been much better than Liberal-National governments. There was the much heralded 2011 Productivity Commission inquiry Caring for Older Australians which delivered nothing for quality of care. Mark Butler was Minister for Ageing from 2010 to 2013. In his maiden speech to Parliament in 2008 he said: “If there is only one thing I could do in my time in this place it would be to get a better deal for low paid workers in Australia” (18 February, 2008). In 2011 he said: “Aged care workers are doing incredibly important work … and quite frankly they could often earn more down at the local pub” (Cited in D. O’Keefe and N. Egan, Nursing Review, September 2011:4).
A flawed then foiled attempt
Labor did attempt wage increases in 2012 through tied grants to providers. But the plan was complex and slow. Then, as Rick Morton explains, in 2013 Tony Abbott labelled the project “unionism by stealth” which was misleading. When elected he introduced legislation to terminate it. Providers were very happy when the proposed tied funds were returned to the general aged care budget (R. Morton, ‘The collapse of aged care’, The Saturday Paper, 19-25 September 2020:8). From 2007 to 2013 however, Labor did nothing about staffing levels, qualifications or requirements for English language skills.
Perhaps major party responses will be different when the Royal Commission reports in February 2021.