The Shadow Minister for Aged Care has used her speech at The Dementia Centre’s International Dementia Conference to take a sideswipe at the Albanese Government over the makeup of mandated care minutes in residential aged care.
Speaking at the conference in Sydney this morning (6 September), Senator Ruston labelled the Government’s decision not to include Enrolled Nurses or allied health in the care minutes requirement – due to increase to 215 minutes next month – as “one of the greatest ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater ideas’ that I have seen so far” to a round of applause from the audience.
While she welcomed the Government’s decision to allow ENs to deliver up to 10% of Registered Nurse care minutes, the Shadow Minister stated that it was important to recognise the importance of having a ‘fit for purpose’ model that meets the needs of residents first.
“Seriously, a one size fits all model is just plain lazy policy,” she stated.
“Coming from rural and regional Australia, as I do, it becomes more and more evident the further you get away from the metropolitan area that ‘one size fits all’ just does not work because we have challenges … that you don't see in cities, and we do need to make sure that we recognise that sometimes shallow markets need innovative and flexible responses.”
Minister Ruston also again criticised the failure to include the issue of workforce in the Aged Care Taskforce’s terms of reference.
There was no word however as to whether the Coalition and the Government have come to a bipartisan agreement on the Taskforce recommendations, which the Minister for Aged Care and Sport, Anika Wells alluded to 24 hours earlier.
Parliament is now set to return to Canberra next Monday (9 September) – watch this space then.
