Budget 2019: home care packages ‘need $5bn injection’

The Coalition needs to make a down payment of $5 billion in next week’s budget for home care, a peak seniors group says.

Council on the Ageing chief executive Ian Yates.

The Coalition needs to make a down payment of $5 billion in next week’s budget to do half the work in bringing the average wait time for aged care home-support packages down from one year to three months, the nation’s peak seniors group says.

Council on the Ageing originally modelled how many packages would be required to do this but Department of Health first ­assistant secretary Fiona Buffinton last week finally put a dollar figure on the table at the royal commission: $2bn to $2.5bn each year in additional funding.

COTA chief executive Ian Yates told The Australian the federal government should provide $1.25bn each year over the forward estimates if it wants to build on last year’s budget that sold ageing as its centrepiece but delivered only piecemeal reform and funding.

Extreme wait times are not a “new situation”, he said.

“It has just become more starkly obvious since mid-2017 with the creation of a single national queue. People have been dying while waiting for high-level packages for years,” Mr Yates said.

“It’s a nightmare that for many never comes to a positive end.”

Timothy McEvoy, senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, told the ­hearing last week after a week of evidence on home-care packages that ­people were waiting two years for the highest level support package. “The waiting times to which older Australians have been subjected in between being assessed as needing home-care packages and actually receiving funding for care are ­severe and unacceptable,” Dr McEvoy said.

“This has caused great suffering and continues to do so. Long waiting lists are cruel, unfair, ­disrespectful and discriminatory against older Australians.”

Including last year’s budget, the Coalition has already pumped more than $2bn into home care alone — leaving aside funding for nursing homes altogether — although this has scarcely stabilised the surging growth in the waiting list for packages. The federal government is expected to make significant announcements in next week’s budget.