News and Issues

The following statements are reporting news or making statements of policy which relate to specific issues raised at a point in time and must be looked upon as views expressed in regard to that single issue at that specific point in time.

Policies and our stance on issues are subject to change, addition or deletion as the membership of the Seniors United Party of Australia so determines

Illawarra Mercury Editorial - Bob Patrech Feb 2022

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3rd February Press Release
Age Care Reform Held Back By Both Major Parties.

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Issue 2021-01: Federal Budget 2021 – Aged Care Reform

Review of COTA AUSTRALIA POLICY ALERT – June 2021 No.18

OVERVIEW

The overall goal of the initiative is both important and appropriate.

The key critical issue for seniors today and in the future is retaining independence and being able to “Age in Place” for as long as desired and possible. This means the provision of effective and graduated home care services to meet individual needs must become the first priority of aged-care service provision. This must be appropriately and effectively managed and funded. This must be simple to both manage and access for all requiring the services.

Given our aging population, the need for effective and cost-effective aged care is only going to become more critical in the immediate future. An aging in place approach is not only the best way to help our growing elderly population, but it’s going to be by far the most cost-effective process available over time. The more successful we are at implementing this strategy the less pressure we are going to put on the more costly and harder to resource provision of residential aged care. As we have seen pointedly over the last few years the residential aged care sector needs a massive and major overhaul and has done for the last 2 or 3 decades.

This is a first significant step in an appropriate direction towards an urgently required solution.

GOOD

  1. The goals and strategies of the reforms are clear and appropriate.
  2. Funding and budget allocations seem appropriate and sufficient at this early stage but, contingencies for necessary overruns should be planned into budgets.
  3. One mission critical area is the provision of user-friendly systems carefully crafted to meet the needs of the target sector. The need for significant improvement in the provision of digital and on-line services appears to have been recognised and provided for in this reform. It has been given the appropriate level of importance and funding at this stage.
  4. The extension of accreditation systems is both welcome and overdue. The addition of a fully transparent process including a “star Rating” concept is welcome provided the criteria and rules are established using appropriate consultation with all parties involved such as the users of the system, the staff involved in providing the care services and service provision experts.
  5. The recognition caregivers at all levels need significant training (retraining in some circumstances) and support. Providing initiatives to achieve this seems to have received an appropriate level of attention and funding.

BAD

  1. Home-care provision (packages) need much greater flexibility. In general services should be provided on a needs basis but should still be generous rather than mean.
  2. The implementation plan needs much greater urgency. A significantly shorter lead-time is highly desirable.
  3. Beware over-regulation and red tape as that will bog down any implementation plans and the service provision.
  4. The work force issues are more likely to derail the implementation of the reform than any other problems evident so far.
  5. The Devil is in the detail and for us this is where it could all go wrong.

Issue 2020-02: Banking Royal Commission

We, the Seniors United Party of Australia are disappointed with the failure of the Government to implement all the findings and recommendations of the Banking Royal Commission. We are also dissatisfied with the constraint placed on the Royal Commission be unacceptable terms of reference. We call upon the government of the day to expand the terms of reference, revise the findings and implement them as a matter of extreme importance and urgency.

Issue 2020-01: Superannuation

The Seniors United Party of Australia calls on the Government to reverse the changes to superannuation as announced in the 2017 budget:

  • We strongly oppose the decision to backdate a lifetime cap on contributions to superannuation to 2007 which breaches the long-standing convention that no major changes to superannuation would be applied retrospectively and call on the Government to reverse this provision.
  • We especially oppose the announcement of the Transition to Retirement scheme changes which would see income earned on the pension side of that scheme taxed for the first time at 15%.  We see this as a disincentive for workers over 55 to take this scheme up so that they can reduce their working hours leading up to full retirement.
  • The Seniors United Party of Australia opposes any further changes to superannuation until a national, fully independent and external inquiry is held on retirement income.

We believe that the superannuation guarantee charge should be progressively lifted from the current 9.5% to 15% over a 10-year period.

Successive Federal Governments from all sides of politics need to stop seeing superannuation as a goldmine with which they can interfere with when their own budget strategies don’t work out and when the economy gets into trouble.

Constitution

The national constitution of the party is currently under review. The national constitution is consistent with but, independent from each State Branch constitution. The appropriate constitutions are available to party members upon request.