Actions prove to be harder than words for Anthony Albanese

Anthony Albanese promoting his plan to improve food in aged care facilities in May 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Fixing aged care may have been a convenient campaign pitch for Anthony Albanese ahead of the 2022 election but he is facing an uphill battle to improve the sector’s standards and ensure it is on a sustainable financial footing.

It is a political minefield similar to the NDIS, with few people liking the idea of limiting taxpayer-funded places and even fewer willing to acquiesce to a new tax to fund the exponential cost growth the sector is facing.

It turns out being in government is a lot more difficult than shouting at Scott Morrison from the opposition benches. With the Covid-19 pandemic elevating community concerns about how the elderly were treated in aged care, Labor outlined a host of pre-election policies that sounded eminently reasonable to voters. They included requiring at least one registered nurse at each facility at all times, mandating a minimum direct care time of 215 minutes per resident, setting better standards for food, and backing higher wages for aged care workers.

But providers are grappling with implementing the plan in an environment where residential aged care homes have collectively lost $3.5bn in the past five years and there are not enough workers available.

Ironically, given Labor’s war on contractors, aged care providers are increasingly resorting to using labour hire workers as they try to ramp up staffing levels to meet the government’s requirements.

With the sector warning the squeeze is expediting the closure of aged care homes, the Prime Minister either needs to provide more leeway for providers struggling to find staff or make tough decisions on the funding of services.

The government’s aged care taskforce will next year release its advice on how the sector should be funded so it can grow to service an ageing population.

There are expectations it will recommend the wealthy pay more for their care, effectively subsidising people with lower super balances.

This would be highly contested but there are no easy answers in turning around the dire outlook for the sector.