The aged care minister, Anika Wells, says Australians want more “choice” on aged care and would be prepared to pay for it, as the government mulls the introduction of a user-pays system.
Wells told ABC’s Insiders the Albanese government’s position on aged care was consistent, playing down calls for a levy before the election because it was “still not advocating any particular proposal”, merely establishing a taskforce which will consider how to make aged care sustainable.
This will include consideration of levies, recommended by both of the aged care royal commissioners, and higher financial contributions from users, recommended by one of the commissioners in its March 2021 report.
Before the election, then-opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Labor was “not proposing a levy” to pay for aged care, after the Morrison government had ruled one out.
On Sunday Wells told Insiders she had set up the aged care taskforce because “we need to have an honest, responsible and mature discussion about what aged care is going to look like in this country” and it would “answer the question of how do we sustainably, equitably fund aged care in Australia moving forward”.
“I would say we’re still not advocating any particular proposal,” she said. “What we are saying is that we are opening up a taskforce, like you said, short, sharp, to deliberate for six months on how to move forward.”
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Wells said the taskforce had a “genuine duty” to deliberate on the levy and user pay recommendations of the royal commission, to consider them before ruling them out “immediately”.
Wells signalled the government is open to a greater user-pay system, agreeing the taskforce would investigate examples like why only $186,000 of property wealth is taken into account when calculating subsidies.
“I think we need a system that people feel like they’ve got a choice about where they go and if they have the means to pay for it, they can do so.”
“[People] want more options, they are prepared to pay for higher quality care, but they can’t find it, so my job is to create the policy settings to allow those things to be built so people can find it.”
Wells, who worked in aged care after university and whose mother also worked in aged care, said the policy area had “been allowed to drift, as being too hard for decades and decades”.
Wells said asking how much to invest was putting the “cart before the horse”. “We are coming at this from the perspective [of]: how do we lift the standard of care in this country?”
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Wells said she hoped the future of aged care would be like the “village” model in the Netherlands, with elderly residents living in houses with six to seven people with access to common facilities like “a restaurant, a gym, or a village green”.
She said this model encouraged higher visitation because relatives “don’t feel it is too institutional”.
Wells said that she had accepted “for some months” that the government “will fall short” of its target of nurses on call 24/7 in aged care homes from 1 July.
“I don’t regret making that promise because come 1 July, even where we fall short, there will still be many, many more nurses providing many, many more care hours in nursing homes than ever,” she said.
Aged care providers will also be required to tell the regulator what alternative care arrangements they have in place, she said.
Wells also committed to release Labor’s position on the Aged Care Quality and Safeguards Commission “as soon as I can manage” after a report on the future of the regulator was handed to her six weeks ago.