Stewart Barbara: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18228. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I am very pleased to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First. It would be very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security listening to some of the speeches from that side of the House and seeing the generous dollop of money that was put into the health area in the latest Budget. In New Zealand First we particularly liked some of the health initiatives that received funding. We liked the free health care for all children aged under 13. That has been one of our policies for many many years so we were pleased to see it come into fruition. We also liked the fact that children are going to get two cochlear implants. We all need two ears to hear rather than one. So there were some very positive initiatives in health.However once again this Government has neglected the very important area of aged care in its Budget. We all know that the need is increasing at a steady rate and that when people go into a rest home their needs are far greater than they ever have been because they stay at home for as long as they possibly can. We like them to do that too. But there was absolutely nothing that actually looks at funding for aged-care services and employees. The Budget was totally silent on anything and everything that actually applies to this particular group. No strategy was visible apart from ignoring the problem. I was looking for “faster better sooner” action in this particular area and I know that the Minister of Revenue the Hon Todd McClay was talking about that previously.Hon Todd McClay: Yes.BARBARA STEWART: See we do listen on this side of the House.Working in a rest home is not an easy job; rather the reverse. I would say that most of us here in this House could not and would not want to work in this particular area. Fortunately there are people who can and who do and who like to work in this area caring for our seniors. Aged-care workers provide a great service while battling and scrimping to survive on the minimum wage which has been completely overlooked by this Government. One can earn more money in a supermarket packing shelves than what one can earn in the rest home industry. These hard workers have a very demanding job looking after our elderly whether it is in a rest home or even in the person’s own home.We rely on these people to carry out this job yet the Government basically ignores them as if they do not matter. We all know that costs are rising right throughout New Zealand society. Pressure is building and aged-care workers need to get a bigger slice of the pie than they get now. These people have been to our Health Committee. Of course we have got all parties represented on the select committee including Government members but really we are not listening to what these workers are saying. There were as I said earlier a number of good health care initiatives in the Budget but the failure to address the district health board funding at the levels required to maintain the service in this particular sector is disappointing and it is going to result in increased pressure on staff across the whole sector.The bottom line—and we all know it—is that our country is facing an ageing population and we need the facilities and the workers to help cope with this. The number of aged-care facilities the number of beds and the number of staff are all going to need to increase to cope with the demand that we have upon us. The 2010 GrantThornton aged residential care services review predicted that by 2026 between 12000 and 20000 new residents would require aged residential care—not a little number.The Government clearly needs to quantify the impending demand for elderly care. But what do we see? Basically this has been trivialised because the valuable occupation of aged care is being ignored. Aged-care staff carry out a whole range of tasks—some of them are seriously unpleasant—and they are woefully underpaid for them. The fact that a person can receive a better wage stacking shelves at the supermarket shows just how much value the Government places on this particular sector. It is absolutely disgraceful. The Government must set appropriate staffing levels and remuneration for aged-care workers to acknowledge their vital work and ensure the safety and care of those people working in the sector. The subsidy paid for the elderly in care should also increase. New Zealand First believes that it needs to increase as recommended in a 2008 report and then be adjusted to meet the annual rate of inflation. That is only fair.So what do we have? The Government is primarily to blame for the low wages and pay inequalities in the aged residential care sector. New Zealand First took action in 2005 to improve workers’ wages after a PricewaterhouseCoopers report showed that the sector was seriously underfunded by about 20 percent—a percentage that has only ever increased over the years. As part of New Zealand First’s confidence and supply agreement with the Labour Government in 2005 we boosted funding by $850 million over two Budgets. Post-2008 National took its eye off the ball and it did not inflation-adjust the increase we worked so hard to get. That has led to the situation today where Government workers are paid about 16 percent more than private providers doing similar work in residential aged-care facilities and in home-based community support.This Government needed to front up to ensure fair uniform funding for the aged-care sector which provides a valuable yet totally unappreciated service. And did it? No it did not. The Government needed to include money in the Budget to ensure that our older age group is adequately cared for and living in conditions that we would be happy to live in ourselves or for our parents or our grandparents to live in. People have sent me photos that show that some of the facilities are disgraceful. A student flat would be far better than some of the conditions that elderly residents are living in. By paying the staff a minimum wage reducing bed numbers and not keeping standards at a premium we are never going to see any improvement in this area. The Government is going to be completely caught out if it does not address adequate funding of this area now. The Budget was totally lacking in this area and the silence was absolutely deafening.