SPEECH – Opening Address to the National Carer Conference 2014

It’s great to be here and with the fabulous President of Carers Australia Karen Cook, the wonderful Ara Creswell, the CEO of Carers Australia, and our host here today Deborah Cottrell, the CEO of Carers Queensland. Can I also acknowledge here today those people who work in organisations that support older Australians, that support people with disability, that support people with mental and other illnesses and those who support people who face extra challenges in life.

But mostly, I want to acknowledge the carers.

The unpaid carers, the family and friends who, because of circumstances usually not within their control, do the things that need to be done. We are here today as a gathering to be with you and to support you and so that you can connect with each other.

About a month ago we had a great opportunity as a nation, with Carers Week, to pause and reflect and to recommit as a community to do whatever we can do to support carers.

As a time to pause and a time to reflect, it was a time to think about the things that are good, but also to think about these things that are a challenge. We know that being a carer can be rewarding, but it can also be isolating. That why it’s great that the conference over the next three days is focused on connecting carers. It’s a great chance to share your experiences.

There are many things that Ara has done brilliantly, but one of them is that Ara has absolutely drilled into us all the statistics about carers in Australia. All of us, when we first wake up in the morning, know that there are over 2.7 million carers nationwide. We know that about two thirds of carers look after someone who is younger than 65 and another third care for a person over the age of 65.

We also know of the concept of the Carer Triangle, where there may be a person caught between the generations and caring for both an elderly parent and a child. And sometimes ageing themselves as well.

This is a source of fulfilment for many, and we know it’s an affirmation of family. But being a carer can be physically demanding and emotionally demanding.

Ara has also drilled into us that just about all of us will be a carer at some point in our lifetime. And stats show that this will mostly occur between the ages of 35 and 65. And as you know these are the prime income earning years. And that does take a toll. An additional toll on financial resources and a toll on employment options.

And one of the things that we reflect on as we gather, is how do we help carers to remain connected with the workplace. How do we help carers get back into work when their caring responsibilities are at an end.

Employers who will have an open mind. And if they do have an open mind, they will realise there is an incredible talent pool, that comprises carers in Australia, that they are currently in large measure denying themselves.

We who know carers know that carers who are given the opportunity to work alongside their caring responsibilities are great employees.

One thing I say to employers every chance I get, is that carers are great multi-taskers. Carers work to competing deadlines, they balance deadlines. They balance all sorts of things, because that is what they have to do as a carer. And that is a great asset, that is a great skillset that you should avail yourselves of.

So that is certainly a missing piece of the puzzle.

It will initially be a Commonwealth and NSW initiative, but I’d warmly welcome other states and territories to be part of this Network. We want to change the national culture of employment and benefit every carer looking for work.

Our second joint initiative is to create an app for carers to document and then translate their carer?related skills into training and employment competencies.

The new app will help carers to demonstrate the skills that they have obtained to help them look for jobs to showcase the array of new skills they have gained by virtue of being a carer and those skills they already possessed.

These are just a few of the practical steps to try to improve the prospects of people who are carers when it comes to employment.

We will be privileged a little later in this conference to hear from several young carers the experiences they have had – as they have had to juggle just that.

That session is being facilitated by the great Professor Tim Moore, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University . I don’t know about you, but I always feel better when Tim Moore is in the room. He always makes everything feel that little bit better. So that will be a great session.

Tim ran our focus groups earlier this year, which were part of bringing about the Young Carer Bursary. That’s a commitment we made as a government about a year ago. It’s an opportunity for about 150 young carers each year to receive up to $10,000 a year to make a small contribution to helping them stay in study.

Tim’s work has been great in helping to craft that. And the Young Carer Bursary – governments aren’t always good at rolling things out – so we’re doing that in partnership with Carers Australia.

Applications have closed and before they did close, Ara would call me every couple of days saying that there’s more coming in, which is a great thing – it’s a good problem to have.

In this initial phase, there’ll be about  34,000 people with disability who get supports auspiced by the NDIS. At full rollout, that’ll be about 460,000 people.

We have to make absolutely sure in this trial phase – where we’re trying to learn lessons and make adjustments before full rollout – that we do take fully into account the needs and situations and perspectives of carers. It’s something that the NDIS Agency has been developing and improving on, and I’m sure that they will improve yet further.

I want to make absolutely clear to you that the NDIS – yes it’s great, we support it, we will see it fully rolled out – but I want to make it absolutely clear to you that we do not see the NDIS as the answer or the avenue or the mechanism through which all supports for carers will be provided.

Yes, the NDIS will make the situation of many carers better, because people with disability will get the support that they deserve. But we do need to continue to have – and we will continue to have – stand-alone support for carers. It’s important that we do separately assess the needs of carers.

We do as a community, and through the government on behalf of the community, do a bit for carers. I don’t want to mention programmes or dollar figures because whenever a minister mentions dollar figures it tends to leave the impression that somehow that’s government money, which it is benevolently bestowing upon people, when it’s nothing of the sort. It’s the money that you have paid in taxes, are paying in taxes, or will pay in taxes. So there’s significant support  by the community through government.

But I think that we can do better, and we do have the opportunity to do better. The reason I say that is because we have now brought together in one department, in one portfolio and under one minister, responsibility for ageing, for disability, for carers, for community mental health. All of those elements are now in the one portfolio.

That gives us a much greater and a much better opportunity to look at the needs of carers in a coherent and a consistent way. It’s still relatively early days in terms of the Department of Social Services having all of those elements together, but I do hope to have some more positive things to say about how we do that. And it’s great that Karen Wilson from my Department will be speaking to you later in the conference about some of the things that we’re doing to try to bring together those elements to better support carers.

It has been a wonderful experience for me. I have met some incredibly impressive Australians through that role as a shadow minister, and now as minister. I want to make clear to you that this is a portfolio that I want to be in. That I want to stay in. For my part, I hope that I have been able to make a small contribution in this area. What we’ve started together, I want to see through. It’s a great opportunity to contribute.