Commissioner says ‘unacceptable’ aged care needs funding, vast reform

The federal government will be asked to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s ‘unacceptable’ aged-care system and commit far more funding.

Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs has called for urgent and bold action in aged care.

The federal government will be asked to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s “unacceptable” aged-care system and commit far more funding in the aged-care royal commission’s final report due in February.

Closing the 99th and last day of public hearings over more than two years on Friday, commissioner Lynelle Briggs called for urgent and bold action.

“We have an underfunded system that demonstrably fails to meet community standards of health, personal care and sustenance for a generation of people who are used to just making do,” Ms Briggs said. “The system is not good enough for them and it is unimaginable that future generations will stand for it as it is. It is unacceptable to us all.”

Ms Briggs said the aged-care system will “require a lot more money before the community can have confidence that it will deliver high-quality care consistently and universally”. Additional funding is needed to address the underfunding of the past, service an ageing population used to a different lifestyle than their parents, and meet the costs of a universal entitlement to care, she said.

“And because treating our older people well is purely and simply the right thing to do. Everyone knows it and it’s about time we did it.”

The commission heard from hundreds of witnesses and received more than 10,000 submissions over its two-year life.

In its final sitting Thursday and Friday, counsel assisting the commission, Peter Rozen and Peter Gray, provided commissioners Ms Briggs and Tony Pagone a 500-page final submission charting an ambitious new course for aged care in Australia, including the creation of a new Aged Care Act.

The proposals are founded on a universal entitlement of all older Australians to aged care, rather than the current rationed system.

Among a raft of proposals, it also calls for mandatory staff ratios in nursing homes, the urgent elimination of the waiting list for homecare packages and financial models that attract GPs to attend to older Australians in their home or in residential aged care.

Ms Briggs indicated she was minded to accept the recommendation to replace the existing Aged Care Act with a new one.

Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck said the reform package was not the commission’s final position, but recommendations by counsel assisting. But the blueprint was broadly supported by aged-care providers and unions.

“The proposals … would help remove politics from the … system,” Leading Age Services Australia chief Sean Rooney said.