Aged Care Minister Anika Wells flags major aged care reform after Cooma tasering

A warning has been issued as Australia’s population heads for a record proportion of people in one category.

Australians have been warned that urgent steps need to be taken to remedy our aged care system as the country faces a growing ageing population.

Speaking at the National Press Gallery, Federal Aged Care Minister Anika Wells flagged the need for action while announcing the federal government’s road map for aged care reform.

“We must act now. The baby boomers are coming,” she said on Wednesday.

“Within a decade, our nation will have for the first time in history more people aged over 65 than under 18, and our workforce will be ageing with people aged from 15 to 64 years predicted to decline as a proportion of total population.

“We have already heard the next generation of people entering aged care are going to want a different model and standard of care than those before them.”

Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said urgent reforms need to be made to the aged care sector. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

Taking on the portfolio after Labor’s election win in 2022, Ms Wells said the aged care system was “even worse than we feared”.

She noted a $2.5bn cut to the sector in 2017, chronic understaffing and underpayment of workers, and operating costs, with beds making a loss of more than $8 per day in 2020.

Quoting the royal commission into aged care, she said organisations were “understaffed, underpaid and undertrained,” with 30 per cent of residents experiencing substandard care.

Major change after woman tasered

Ms Wells said the new reforms would involve drafting Australia’s 10-year national dementia action plan, given 54 per cent of all aged care residents live with dementia.

It will also include provision to ensure all aged care providers are “regularly trained in relation to core matters such as caring for people living with dementia”.

Ms Wells said aged care workers would be regularly trained in matters related to dementia while acknowledging the death of Clare Nowland.

Ms Wells also said the government would introduce a new Aged Care Act in 2024 that would deliver on the 24 recommendations made by the royal commission.

A new support-at-home program is also slated to be implemented from July 1, 2025.

Prior to announcing the reforms, she acknowledged the death of 95-year-old great-grandmother Clare Nowland, who was allegedly tasered by Senior Constable Kristian White.

Constable White has since been suspended with pay and charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and common assault.

The case remains before the courts.

At the time of the alleged attack, Ms Nowland, who was in the early stages of dementia and used a walker, had allegedly approached Constable White and another officer while holding a knife.

“Now we must also always seek to deliver better care and the recent tragedy in Cooma has re-enforced the need to greater understand and support people with dementia,” Ms Wells said.

“It has been a difficult time to have a loved one in aged care and that further demonstrates the pressing need for structural reform.”

Although Ms Wells was unable to specifically address whether police should be “one of the first responders” in incidents like Cooma due to ongoing investigations, she said she was “looking at everything that I can control”.

“We got a quality standard that means all workers will need to be trained in what should be the core business of aged care,” she said.

“I consider working with people with dementia a core business of aged care.”