Aged care needs its own senior minister focused on it

It’s time. Which political leader is going to wake up first and realise that the aged care portfolio needs to be elevated into cabinet? No longer handed to one of the least impressive also-rans on the frontbench?

This has long been the case. I’m sure Richard Colbeck is a nice enough fellow, but he’s hardly the sharpest tool in the ministerial shed. His senior minister, Health Minister Greg Hunt, is one of the Coalition’s best performers. But he has enough going on in health when the sector is being tested like never before. Aged Care needs its own senior minister focused only on it.

Will it be Anthony Albanese in opposition who makes this important move first, in a reshuffle handing the job to one of his best and brightest and elevating the role into shadow cabinet? Or will Scott Morrison make the move when his much anticipated reshuffle happens later this year? The departure of Mathias Cormann at year’s end guarantees some changes will need to be made. Why not make this valuable change too?

It is high time a portfolio which has long suffered from gross neglect gets elevated. After all, most of us hope to live long into old age – the alternative isn’t a particularly alluring option. The ageing of the population coupled with the revelations from the ongoing Royal Commission make aged care one of the most important portfolios now and into the future. Its significance is only going to grow and grow, as are the pressures on the system.

To be sure shifting the portfolio into cabinet would be symbolic, but it would do more than just that. A powerful political figure in the role would help drive reforms. At the very least their ambition and standing could see the changes necessary given governmental priority. Perhaps Liberal deputy Josh Frydenberg should request the portfolio for himself? As party deputy he has the right to pick his portfolio. Or the PM could put one of his favourites into it.

Stuart Robert is one of the PM’s closest confidants, but that might make a bad situation worse. Alex Hawke and Ben Morton are both desperate to win promotion into cabinet, and both are competent and close to Morrison. Maybe one of them could take over aged care in cabinet?

Elevating aged care to cabinet would also mean the portfolio no longer sits as a junior subset of the health portfolio. It should also get its own stand alone department, and with that see the best and brightest in the bureaucracy move into key aged care positions.

Indigenous Affairs got the attention it deserved when it was elevated from the outer ministry into cabinet.

The Royal Commission may have been called by the Coalition, but it is now exposing failures which are both historical and contemporary. Failures seemingly more appropriately laid at the feet of the Coalition than Labor. On the weekend Bill Shorten signalled the approach Labor plans to take: highlighting the shift from public to private aged care provisions during the Howard years, and the effect that had on casualising the workforce and lowering standards.

The evidence of a lack of planning for aged care during this pandemic coming out of the Royal Commission has been a body blow for Scott Morrison. All Australians should be appalled by it. He has refuted the suggestion, of course, replete with his Chief Medical Officer (acting in the role but presumably hoping to be permanently appointed) standing next to him at media conferences backing him up.

The concern now has to be that if failures in aged care become a political weapon rather than simply about getting the sector fixed, the government might just dig in and argue against the criticisms. That would mean little change to improve the dire situation at present.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.