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April 20th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda United Voice, the union representing aged-care workers, says a new federal government funding package is a big first step towards fixing the sector’s wage crisis.
The government will spend $3.7 billion overhauling the aged-care system to increase in-home care options, provide more support for dementia sufferers, and attract more workers to the sector.
Up to $1.2 billion will be used to tackle labour shortages, estimated by United Voice to be 100,000 during this decade.
“This package will lift wages and begin to attract workers back to the industry and encourage others to stay,” the union’s national secretary Louise Tarrant said.
“Wages in aged care are as low as $18 per hour, so workers are not in the industry for the financial rewards.”
About 90 per cent of the workforce are women, most are 45 or older and work on average 25 hours a week.
“This is a good start, but there are details to be worked through, and we will be working with the government to ensure the money flows into workers’ pockets,” Ms Tarrant said.
Catholic Health Australia, the nation’s largest network of non-government aged-care services, also welcomed the government’s announcement.
But it warned success would be determined by the willingness of the government to allow its new implementation council to deliver real reform.
Catholic Health’s CEO Martin Laverty said improvements in the quality of care would take some years to deliver.
“We welcome increased daily accommodation payments from the current $32.58 to $52.84 for residential services meeting certain quality standards,” Mr Laverty said.
The introduction of new payment options for those who could afford to contribute to the cost of their accommodation would also lead to improvement in the quality and sustainability of residential aged-care services, he said.
“The government didn’t go as far as we’d wanted to make aged care an entitlement to all assessed as in need,” Mr Laverty said.
“But more care places over the coming years, particularly in a person’s own home, is welcome.”
The federal government will spend $270 million on the care and diagnosis of dementia sufferers.
Alzheimer’s Australia said the package showed the government had not only listened to people with dementia but responded comprehensively to their priorities.
“The government’s decisions are both a reward and a relief to those 280,000 Australians with dementia and their 1.2 million carers,” the organisation’s president Ita Buttrose said.
The centrepiece from a consumer point of view was the strengthening of the community care system to make it possible for people with dementia to stay at home longer, Ms Buttrose said.
“This is central to any strategy for consumer choice, as is the emphasis on more say over the services they need, when they need them and who delivers them,” she said.
Ms Buttrose said a concern remained about the level of investment in dementia research.
“But this is an issue that Alzheimer’s Australia will be pursuing vigorously through the minister’s review of scientific and medical funding in Australia,” she said.
UnitingCare Australia, which manages 12 per cent of all residential aged-care places with more than 12,000 beds, said seniors wanted to stay in their own home and community as long as they could.
Nearly a quarter of the government’s package is earmarked for in-home care.
“That’s a very good thing,” national director Lin Hatfield-Dodds said.
The not-for-profit provider also welcomed new fair and flexible financing arrangements, saying equity had been missing in action for too long.
“We are very pleased to see measures that will ensure vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians are protected and supported,” Ms Hatfield-Dodds said.
At the same time those who could afford to pay a fair share towards the costs of their accommodation and care would do so.
The $1.2 billion to alleviate workforce pressures would go “a long way” to delivering higher wages, better training and professional development, and improved career pathways.
Ms Hatfield-Dodds called on all political parties to support the package.
The CEO of the Council on the Ageing, Ian Yates, said he was disappointed that the government had not taken up a recommendation to make aged care an entitlement, similar to Medicare.
While that view was not feasible with current shortages of supply, creating an entitlement should be the objective of the five-year review of the reform package, Mr Yates said.
“Until we do that we’ve still got to be having concerns that there’ll be people missing out,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Mr Yates fronted media flanked by Mr Laverty, representing providers, and the United Voice union’s assistant national secretary, Sue Lines.
All acknowledged the gathering was historically unusual.
“In years past it would have been impossible to have unions, consumer groups and providers of aged care united … in supporting the government’s plans for the future of quality aged care,” Mr Laverty said.
Mr Yates said the sector had worked together since about 2009 to achieve change.
“We recognised that government after government had aged-care reform in the too-hard basket and the sector being divided enabled that to happen,” he said.
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