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Speaker 1: The independent member for the seat of Mayo up in

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Speaker 1: the Adelaide Hills, is asking the government about the gap

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Speaker 1: in allied healthcare services for older people in aged care,

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Speaker 1: and it seems to come down to the fact that

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Speaker 1: there are enough staff to provide allied health services for

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Speaker 1: around four minutes a day to people who require allied

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Speaker 1: health Rebecca Sharky is the federal member for the seat

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Speaker 1: of Mayo.

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Speaker 2: Rebecca, good morning, Good morning, Matty. How are you good?

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Speaker 1: Thank you? Is this a staffing issue primarily?

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Speaker 2: Look, it's hard to know. I mean, if we look

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Speaker 2: at twenty twenty, there were around eleven two hundred people

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Speaker 2: who were doing this work. And when I'm talking at

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Speaker 2: doing this, we're talking about physios, we're talking about speech pathologists,

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Speaker 2: and we're talking about dietitians who were working in age care,

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Speaker 2: you know, consulting in and out of age care highs.

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Speaker 2: Now that's fallen to six thousand, four hundred in twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty three, so a reduction of forty two percent. Now,

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Speaker 2: back when the Royal Commission was on the commissioners found

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Speaker 2: that eight minutes a day of care back then was inadequate.

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Speaker 2: Now we're down to just four minutes a day and

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Speaker 2: the government has to address this. And the reason why

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Speaker 2: the government has to address this is because physio can

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Speaker 2: help with your unmanaged pain and if you don't address it,

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Speaker 2: you can lead to a loss of strength and mobility.

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Speaker 2: You can also lead to dependence on painkillers. When we're

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Speaker 2: looking at speech of pathologists, often a lot of that

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Speaker 2: works around swallowing. And we know that if you're not

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Speaker 2: swallowing well, you're likely to aspirate food and that leads

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Speaker 2: people vulnerable to pneumonia and other infections. And we know

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Speaker 2: right now that the malnutrition rate or at risk of

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Speaker 2: malnutrition rate as of July this year is at sixty

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Speaker 2: eight percent. How can it be that we have less

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Speaker 2: nutritions in and we're talking about five dollars a days

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Speaker 2: all the spend. Five dollars and seventeen cents right now

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Speaker 2: is all the spend. So I'm raising this because I

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Speaker 2: think we need to get this onto the national agenda

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Speaker 2: and we need to push government to recognize this and

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Speaker 2: fund this appropriately. We just can't keep neglecting people we

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Speaker 2: live in residential age care. That's why we had a

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Speaker 2: Royal commission.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know you talk about the drop in

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Speaker 1: numbers from eleven thy four hundred to six thousand, four

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Speaker 1: hundred people in the sector. I imagine over that time the

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Speaker 1: number of people qualifying for age care packages has risen

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Speaker 1: probably exponentially.

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Speaker 2: We certainly have had more people moving into ACTEV. We

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Speaker 2: have an aging populations. But this is to me is

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Speaker 2: a smart spend as well, because if you're getting a

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Speaker 2: little bit of care to help you with swallowing and

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Speaker 2: you're not getting the monuent, you're not ending up in

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Speaker 2: the hospitals right now. Again, if you are getting a

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Speaker 2: bit of care to get your nutrition right, we know

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Speaker 2: that if people have the right amount of dairy every day,

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Speaker 2: we're reducing fractures. We know that someone falls over if

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Speaker 2: they didn't get transferred into the hospital system, it's not

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Speaker 2: where they want to be, and it's it's also incredibly expensive.

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Speaker 2: So this to me is a you know, we need

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Speaker 2: to not only look at this from the individual and

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Speaker 2: ensuring that when you're in residential age care that you

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Speaker 2: have that you're still living. You need to make sure

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Speaker 2: that we're having the best life that we can possibly

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Speaker 2: wrap around a person with support. But then also you

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Speaker 2: know there's the cost factor and it it just is

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Speaker 2: not making sense, and people feel that because we've had

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Speaker 2: the World Commission, clearly, you know, age care, we've addressed

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Speaker 2: that will give that a tick. But what I'm uncovering

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Speaker 2: really feels like every week I'm uncovering something new is

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Speaker 2: that I feel we are in a worse position now

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Speaker 2: than what we were during the Royal Commission with respect

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Speaker 2: to care, with respect to getting a home care place.

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Speaker 2: It really is disgraceful that we're saying to people, you know,

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Speaker 2: five dollars a day is what the spend is, four

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Speaker 2: minutes per day when you average out across all the residents,

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Speaker 2: half of what it was during the Royal Commission is acceptable.

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Speaker 1: It's just not Yeah, yeah, all right. So you're waiting

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Speaker 1: on a response from the government on this, y. Yes.

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Speaker 2: So I've asked a series of questions. So there's formal

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Speaker 2: questions in writing, and the Minister is required to respond

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Speaker 2: to those questions. She actually has I think sixty days

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Speaker 2: formerly to do that, and if she hasn't responded to me,

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Speaker 2: I stand up in question time and I asked the

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Speaker 2: Speaker to direct her to respond to me. So there

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Speaker 2: it's a pretty you know, serious tool to use. But

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Speaker 2: I want to know what the minister is doing about this,

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Speaker 2: because this is yet another national shame that's sitting in

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Speaker 2: Asia and we still haven't seen the age care that

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Speaker 2: they've been talking about that we were supposed to see

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Speaker 2: in the parliament in July twenty twenty three and in

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Speaker 2: July twenty twenty four, and we're now in September.

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Speaker 1: All right, we'll see where it ens. So I appreciate

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Speaker 1: your time this morning, Rebecca, Thank you so much. Rebecca Sharky,

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Speaker 1: Independent member for the seat of Mayo calling for better

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Speaker 1: services in aged care. And if you're in the system

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Speaker 1: or you're on an aged care package and you get

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Speaker 1: the physio coming around, and I just wonder how frequent

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Speaker 1: it is and how satisfied you are, whether you're in

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Speaker 1: a home or in your own home getting the assistance

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Speaker 1: through your aged care package,