It’s not until you crunch the numbers that you realise just how insulting Scott Morrison’s offer of two $400 bonus payments to aged care workers — swallowed hook, line and sinker by press gallery journalists — actually is.
For a part-time mid-level personal care worker, working 25 hours a week and earning some penalty rates for weekend work, it amounts to just under 2% — or, given the current level of inflation of 3.5%, a real pay cut of 1.6%.
For a full-time, high-level personal care worker it’s about 1.4%. For mid-level aged care nurses, it’s less than 1%.
Meanwhile Morrison is refusing to support the union-employer backed value of work case before the Fair Work Commission that would substantially increase aged care workers’ permanent and ongoing pay. The prime minister’s refusal is in direct defiance of the recommendation of the aged care royal commission, which found what so many other reports and inquiries have found for more than two decades: the only way to address the crisis in our aged care workforce is to value it more by paying workers more.
Meanwhile the sector stumbles on, begging for military boots on the ground because so many facilities haven’t enough staff to provide the basics of quality care for residents, so many of whom are in another miserable lockdown,
And the deaths continue to mount. The blood of hundreds of Australian seniors — sickeningly dismissed yesterday by Health Minister Greg Hunt as mainly being in palliative care, so therefore somehow expendable — is on the hands of this disgraceful, disastrous government.
And, as always, the only answer from Morrison is yet another announcement, yet another press release, yet another stunt, designed to fix the political problem he faces and not the real policy challenge.
It’s nauseating, and tragic, and should be a national outrage.
Have you or someone you love been affected by the crisis in aged care. Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Thanks for insightful article. Your final line “It’s nauseating, and tragic, and should be a national outrage” . I wish I could understand why it isn’t.
Very insightful Bernard, this is why I subscribe to Crikey and Guardian as both are not pulling punches.
My ex and one daughter work in aged care and both are laughing at the chicke feed thrown to them.
12 hour shifts at a minimum, on call to replace staff that are burned out, falling ill under pressure.
And the Government tries to bolster it’s image by throwing them 2x $400.
Really cariing Government when it wastes money on dodgy deals that assist friends, allies of the L/NP
Another Morrison government workshopped stunt :- “$400 would sound like a lot of money to the rubes out there.”?
…. Is there any collective more ethically stunted than Morrison’s gang?
But how about some sympathy for these employer/donors(?). If they had to pay their workers what they were worth (in what they do) : what would that do to profits ….. underwritten by Howard’s open-market influenced Aged Care Act of ’97?
What would a drop in profits do to those donations?
And again with this “Hunt Club” mentality :-
I find it passing strange, watching what seems to be the “sale’s pitch” manifestation from some sort of product “marketing” organisation work-shopping (“PMOw-s”?), emanating from the maws of the likes of Morrison, Hunt, Kelly, Perrottet, Cousin Jethro and all, to be peddling the morbid “optimum Covid death rates” line in an attempt to try to quell any sort of backlash resulting from punters’ lived experiences – resulting from government’s abject failure (pursuant to their obsessive, prioritised “let-it-rip/economy first”), maladministration, of the pandemic and public health.
Expediency! That’s what drives our current PM Klewso. “It’s nauseating and tragic, and should be a national outrage,” But it isn’t. And on who’s shoulders does that rest? Words! What’s required . . . are votes?
NO
Just throwing out crumbs from off of the table.
Morrison really should price bread and milk to get a clue as to how far $400 goes.
Well said Bernard Keane.
Minister Jane Hume on ABC RN Breakfast was sticking to the talking points and painting a very rosy picture, of course. She was very clear the government saw no need to support the proposed pay rise for aged care workers because it would cost money when as she put it the workforce and the system has to be “sustainable into the future”.
Presumably she added “into the future” so nobody would think she meant “sustainable into the past”. At least she avoided saying “going forward”, let’s be thankful for small mercies. But how sustainable can aged care possibly be on the inadequate and declining wages paid now?
We need more women like Jane in the jungle.
Preferably right in front of a hungry lioness with cubs to feed and no time to much around.
Their idea of a sustainable system is one based on cheap expendable migrant labour.
Meanwhile in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 (haven’t seen data for 2020 and 2021), MPs got a 2.0% pa increase in their base salary.
I’m not that bothered by MPs being paid or by them getting increases at or close to wage rises generally. Go back far enough and all MPs were unpaid; in consequence they all had significant private wealth and no hesitation in using their position to accept payments as a normal part of their parliamentary activities. It was only possible for working class candidates to stand once MPs were paid. The current mania for freezing MPs salaries began under Thatcher’s government in the UK. Thatcher loathed MPs for trying to exercise some oversight of her government and found it highly amusing the public was largely happy when she attacked them. She was exploiting the general inability of the public to distinguish between the government (executive) and Parliament (legislature).
It would be more useful in this context to see what increases were paid to ministers, including such significant perks as their extremely generous pensions.
My linking the pay increases was to contrast with the Minister’s refusal to support a pay increase for aged care workers. It was clear enough inside my head! 🙂
We should index MPs pay against the national median income as specified by the ABS. People should not enter parliament with the expectation of wealth.
Should also link their super % to that of workers. As one of their employers, as are we all, the line that our employers couldn’t afford to implement our super rise but theirs could didn’t go down at all well.
“Sustainable” means a different thing to the Morrison government from what everyone else understands it to mean. The government only considers the supply side – workers, which must be minimised as an expense – and the demand side of the elderly can rot in hell – or better, right here on earth.
I am going to quote from an article ‘Utilitarianism and the pandemic’ (2020) in Bioethics vol 34, Issue 6 pp. 620-632.
“Failing to implement a good policy is equivalent to actively implementing a bad policy, when the outcome of the two decisions is the same. Utilitarians hold policy makers responsible not only for what they do, but for what they fail to do. Failing to implement other policies with the result of avoidable, foreseeable deaths is equivalent to killing for utilitarians’.
Time and time Morrison and his other parasites will claim that the many aspects of the COVID19 pandemic were unforeseeable and hence like a certain Roman governor wash their hands of the consequences of their actions or in-actions. Unfortunately fr too many of their bungled actions in-actions and policies had entirely predictable consequences.
The sins of omission compared with the sins of commission
Exactly