Labor senator calls for “realistic changes” in aged care

The Tasmanian Labor Senator who chaired the recent aged care inquiry says a proposed industry stakeholder panel must include rural and regional members.

Senator Helen Polley told parliament that it was the only way to ensure that decentralised areas, like much of Tasmania, are effectively represented.

The senator said that close to half of Tasmania’s aged care facilities are operating at a loss.

“The current global economic conditions will only serve to make this situation worse,” she added.

Nearly half of the state’s facilities have fewer than 60 beds and all of them have experienced a 24 per cent hike in electricity prices in the past 18 months.

Senator Polley said Tasmania’s unique characteristics meant that general difficulties experienced throughout the industry are felt more acutely in the island state.

The average accommodation bond in inner Sydney is $520,000 but in the north-west Tasmanian town of Ulverstone it is $189,000.

“The disparate house prices –fuelled by disparate income levels, opportunities over a lifetime and different cost-of-living factors – can lead to vastly different bond amounts and, therefore, vastly different outcomes for the aged care providers,” said Senator Polley.

“The Sydney provider can make $20,000 more per annum based on that bond than the Ulverstone provider can, despite the fact that the resident is fundamentally the same person, with the same needs and the same, if not higher, costs for food and transport.”

The Senator put pressure on her party colleagues in the cabinet by warning that the number of aged care places in Tasmania would fall without “sensible and realistic changes”.