ADJOURNMENT SPEECH ON AGED CARE FACILITIES FOR MULTICULTURAL COMMUNITIES - 11 September 2013

The Hon. SHAOQUETT MOSELMANE [5.47 p.m.]: Australia is experiencing a significant shift in its demographic profile. Decreasing birth rates and increasing life spans across mainstream communities, including culturally and linguistically diverse communities, has meant a growing ageing population. Indeed, one in four older Australians is from a culturally diverse background. The growth in our ageing population has not been met by a growth in aged care services. As the current chair of the leading Age Services Australia and former Defence Chief, General Peter Cosgrove, predicts, the sector would struggle to cope as the number of people over 65 doubles to six million by 2050. With an ever-increasing diversity in our older population, it is time that all governments treat our ageing multicultural population as an important public policy issue to ensure that aged care services will be culturally responsive now and in the future. Peter Cosgrove said: In Australia there is no natural safety net for older Australians. When you need assistance for daily living, if you don't have able family you're in quite a vulnerable position. Every 71 minutes, another Australian cannot access services because those services don't exist. The capacity isn't there. This is why there is a frantic scramble now by many of Australia's multicultural communities to build their own community-specific aged care centres to cater for the cultural needs of their communities. In fact, the Muslim community across Australia is in dire need of aged care facilities. We know that there are more than 500,000 across the nation, with a significant number in New South Wales. This is why the Lebanese Muslim Association has had plans for some time and in fact had purchased land for an aged care centre as far back as 2006. The story is repeated in many Islamic and other migrant community organisations across Western and Southern Sydney. Muslim Care for instance, established in the St George region, also seeks community and government support to establish an aged care centre to cater for the Muslim community in the St George region. This is also the case with South Asian Muslim Association of Australia. This organisation has also been actively working on the establishment of an aged care centre to cater for its community needs in the Western Sydney region. All communities know that aged care centres not only provide the care their elderly need but also provide priority services including domestic assistance, personal care, respite care, social support, transport, centre-based day care and of course religious services attending to the specific spiritual needs of the aged members of the community. The Lebanese Muslim Association will now be the first within the Australian Muslim community to provide an 80 to 100 bed service for its ageing population following a $10 million pledge from the former Labor Government which was matched by the former Liberal-Nationals Coalition. Credit goes to the community, the association executive and its leaders, President Sameer Dandan and Mr Talal Yassine, for such an historical achievement. I

congratulate them as well as my friends Chris Bowen, MP, Jason Clare, MP, and Tony Burke, MP, for supporting this and other aged care initiatives. I take this opportunity to congratulate them on their convincing election win. The need for aged care cuts across the religious and multicultural community. The Federal Government has also recognised that need in the Australian Lebanese Christian Maronite community by granting the Maronite Eparchy of Australia $5 million to build Saint Charbel's aged care centre in Punchbowl and a similar amount was also granted to the group's Our Lady of Lebanon Aged Care Hostel in Harris Park. As I said earlier, the need for aged care cuts across all mainstream and multicultural communities including on the subcontinent, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and others, as well as in the Australian Filipino community. According to the Philippine Tribune, a Filipino community newspaper, more than 45,000 Filipinos live in Western Sydney. A Filipino multipurpose centre already owns 5.5 acres of land in Schofields and only needs funding to erect a building that may well include an aged care facility. Similarly, the South Asian Muslim Association of Australia, based in Western Sydney, has put together a $20 million project and is frantically seeking government support for the delivery of that project. Those are but a few examples of the needs in our communities. I call on State and Federal governments to assist as they know full well that the needs of the aged cannot be swept under the carpet. Many people are in need, whether they are from mainstream, multicultural or Indigenous communities, and their needs must be addressed now. Older Australians have made considerable contributions to building the economic, social and cultural prosperity that we all enjoy today. The onus is on us to acknowledge their contribution and to reciprocate by providing them with the services that they need and deserve.