CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Ms BOELE (Bradfield) (09:30): In the last month, my office has received several calls from distraught constituents desperate to find providers willing to provide services to them under the Commonwealth Home Support Program. These are elderly, vulnerable people—people who have waited nine months or longer to be assessed as eligible for government funded services and people who just need a little bit of help with staying at home, with meals, with cleaning or maybe with a lift to a medical appointment.

But, despite having their long-awaited referral in hand, they're now being told that providers have no capacity and that there are waitlists and not enough government funding to provide the services. One constituent told my office that he had called more than 40 providers within a 20-kilometre radius of his home to access his approved domestic assistance services.

Every single one of these reported they had no funding left to provide services. Another constituent asked us to help her find someone to mow her lawn. When we tried to help, the government told us that we might be better off calling local charities, as they had heard that providers in Bradfield had no funded capacity.

Redirecting eligible people to local charities is not a solution. I welcome the government's recent announcement to extend the home support program for two years. This provides the certainty to providers and recipients that services will continue, but it's disheartening that this extension did not include additional funding.

The government promised its aged-care reforms would create a rights based system of access to care according to an individual's need. It promised to preserve dignity and control and keep people in their own homes as long as possible. Helping people age in place is not only important for their sense of safety and dignity.

In the long run, it's also good for the budget's bottom line. The government's own data estimates that home support program recipients cost a few thousand dollars a year compared to residential aged-care costs of roughly $100,000 a year per person. At the end of the day, people won't judge the government's aged-care system by whether or not they received funding.

They'll judge it by whether they can actually obtain a cleaner, a transport service, a meal delivery or a maintenance home worker. Advocates, peak bodies, the audit office and Senate inquiries have all urged that the government's obligations to older Australians should be measured not in funding but by whether an eligible person can actually access the services that they have been assessed as needing.

So I call on the government to deliver on its aged-care promise and focus on outcomes. A right to care should mean a right to actually receive that care.