Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers delivered his first budget on 25 October 2022.
For the most part, economists have praised it as being conservative and sensible.
Aged Care is one of the “winners”.
$3.9 billion will be allocated to the aged care sector.
Many of the items to be funded have already been flagged by the government. Care will increase to 200 minutes per day per resident (averaged) with at least 40 minutes per day per resident with a registered nurse.
The government has also committed to meet whatever higher wages are determined to be paid to care staff by the Fair Work Commission.
There are a number of other reform initiatives which will be funded. These include:
- $312 million over four years for a technological overhaul to assist administrative workloads;
- $38.7 million over 4 years for an Inspector General of Aged Care;
- $9.9 million over 2 years for the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner; and
- $43.8 million over 3 years for the Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC) Transition Fund.
These are all worthy initiatives and have been welcomed by many spokespersons for industry consumer bodies.
However, there is some caution expressed as the aged care sector battles to deal with staff shortages, Covid-19 lockdowns and supply disruptions which are affecting other parts of the economy.
Staff shortages loom as the biggest problem in the short term. While it is laudable that more care hours and in particular, nursing time, will be funded, there is already a shortage of nurses and trained care staff across Australia. While allowing increased migration is an obvious way of meeting some of the shortfall the shortage of affordable rental accommodation across the country will not help the situation.
There are to be many more funded places for training in the sector but the time that it takes to properly train care staff means that it is not going to be a quick fix.
Meanwhile we will have to rely on existing staff doing what they always do – working extremely hard to look after our aged community.
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