Rich Katherine: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17284] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 The residential care sector has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. As my colleague Lynda Scott said not only have expectations of the level of care changed—people arrive at the facilities with more extreme conditions less able to look after themselves and more in need of quite specialised care—but the expectations of family members and residents have changed as well. I visited the Montecillo Veterans’ Home and Hospital in Dunedin just before it was decided to move the facility altogether. The person who ran that facility said that when family members come to look at the facilities now they have a much higher expectation of what they want for their parents than they did even 10 or 20 years ago. Families are no longer satisfied with little shoebox rooms and single beds. They want en suites colour televisions and a lot of the other things that residents were used to when they lived independently—and rightly so. They want a standard of care that they feel comfortable about putting their parents and other family members into. 
That has meant that a lot of residential care facilities have found it very difficult to upgrade. I believe that is why some of the Christian-based social services agencies are getting out of providing residential care—because they simply cannot look at refurbishing their facilities given the $636 cap on the funding that the Government offers them to provide care. That is why we are seeing a greater amount of cross-subsidisation than we had in the past. In my home town of Dunedin we have a number of very good facilities such as Taieri Court Rest Home Birchleigh Village and Ross Home and Hospital—all facilities that have looked after many friends of our family and also members of my own family. But I must admit I do worry when I get an increasing number of letters from the staff of those facilities from family members of residents and from clients—from residents—who are simply worried and who express concerns about how those services are going to continue in light of the present environment. 
We have heard a lot about broken promises. That is something we do not hear Labour mention in this debate. Labour members say they deliver; they say they keep their promises. I think this would be a good idea for a new Tui beer commercial if Age Concern wanted to pay the money: “Let’s get rid of asset testing. Yeah right.” That is basically what Labour said in the 1990s it would do and it has not done it. Labour is going to make a song and dance about partially keeping a promise but how does one partially keep a promise? The removal of asset testing is one thing that Labour has not delivered on although Helen Clark went from Kaitaia down to Invercargill telling elderly folk that that was exactly what she was going to do. She has not done it and I do not think that has gone unnoticed by Age Concern and Grey Power who are deeply disappointed that the Government has not kept its promise. The Government got all the kudos and the bouquets at the time when it announced that policy and yet when push comes to shove it has not been able to deliver. That promise was not on the pre-election credit card funnily enough because even when the Labour members were in Opposition they knew I think that that promise would be very difficult to deliver on simply because of the cost. When we on the Social Services Committee looked at the cost projections of this particular piece of legislation we got into quite large sums of money that are difficult to imagine particularly when looking at the baby-boom bump coming through in the demographic profile. 
I think one of the ironies of this legislation is that it will put the squeeze on the not-for-profit sector. At a time when the Government is making it far more difficult for private providers to continue to provide early childhood education it is doing exactly the opposite of that when it comes to providing residential aged care. We will see an increasing number of groups leave the residential care market.