PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Ms CLUTTERHAM (Sturt) (11:36): I recently had the privilege of standing with the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors at Amber Aged Care in the suburb of Paradise in the north-east part of my electorate of Sturt as this government announced significant funding for new aged-care beds in Adelaide. The announced funding totalled an additional $34½ million of federal money and, importantly, went towards unlocking $134 million of investment in metropolitan Adelaide to deliver 268 residential aged-care beds.

At Amber Aged Care the $10.4 million allocated will deliver 48 new aged-care beds. Planning is already underway, and construction will commence in December of this year. These new aged-care beds will go towards ensuring that every older Australian receives high-quality, dignified aged care, which is what they deserve and what their families expect.

I've seen firsthand that the team at Amber Aged Care, under the leadership of CEO Dominique Evele, have already been providing this high-quality, dignified care over a long period of time. With this investment they will be called upon to do it on a much larger scale, because the facility is more than doubling. And what do we need if a service offering is more than doubling in size?

We need more qualified people to provide these critical services. We need to provide an environment where aged-care workers, including nurses, are valued, where they are paid fairly and recognised for their work and where the criticality, urgency and immeasurable impact of their work are valued. The Albanese Labor government recognises this.

To the aged-care workers and nurses out there: This government values you. This government does not dismiss your work as being of low value because it forms part of the care economy. This government does not accept that the care economy has exploded in an adverse or unproductive way.

This government does not accept that workers in the care economy have been disproportionately awarded hefty pay rises or that the taxpayer funding used to underwrite these fair and justified pay rises is wasteful spending. We don't accept any of that. That is why, on 1 August this year, aged-care nurses got their fifth pay rise under this government.

This means that a registered nurse on the most common classification is now more than $36,000 a year better off than in 2022. An enrolled nurse on the most common classification is almost $32,000 a year better off. That means they'll stay in their profession.

That means there will be workers to provide care to the elderly Australians who will take up a place in one of the 48 additional aged-care beds at Amber Aged Care. Extra beds are only one piece of the puzzle; qualified workers are another. So I'm tired of hearing the care economy dismissed as unimportant.

Getting older and becoming elderly is a blessing, and, with a bit of luck, every single member of this place and the other place will get old, be elderly and need aged care. When you need it, you won't dismiss it. You'll be deeply, deeply grateful for it, and so will your family.

So to those who dismiss it as reckless spending I say: change your attitude because, although you might not need it now, other Australians do and you owe those Australians your support. In South Australia we have seen elderly Australians staying in hospital longer than necessary when they should be in an aged-care bed. That is what this recent funding announcement is about.

It is about making sure that when a hospital is no longer the appropriate clinical setting and an aged-care bed is that the aged-care system is equipped to respond to that demand. There is no single answer to the challenge of reforming the aged-care system, which is a generational challenge. Sustainable, effective and efficient investment in the aged-care sector is a key pillar of the Albanese Labor government's agenda.

We will continue to invest in residential aged-care capacity such as at Amber and across Adelaide. We will continue to invest in in-home care and we will continue to invest in workers in order to overturn the neglect that characterised the aged-care system when we came to government in 2022.