Australia needs a new aged care home to open every three days. We’re not even close. And when the beds run out, daughters will.
This week, Health Minister Mark Butler stood at the National Press Club to announce a landmark NDIS reset. Tucked inside it, almost as an afterthought, was a $3 billion aged care investment and a pledge to support 5,000 extra beds a year. It sounds like action. Here’s the problem: we need 10,000. Every year. For the next twenty years.
We are not building our way out of this. And when the system buckles, as it already is, the weight will fall, as it always does, on women.
Hospitals have people waiting up to 200 days for a residential bed that doesn’t exist. Occupancy across the sector has surged. And we have been talking about the baby boomers arriving as though they are still on their way. The first one turns 80 this year. They’re here.
Most of the people living in aged care are women. Most of the workforce caring for them are women.
When there aren’t enough beds, those women don’t get a break. They become the system. Unpaid female labour, nationalised by default.
Age 58 is the peak age for unpaid caregiving in Australia. It is also the peak of most senior careers. When the collision hits, something has to give. It is rarely the job that absorbs the impact.
Sixty-six percent of working carers reduce their hours. Thirty-eight percent step out of paid work temporarily or permanently. Forty-five percent report missing promotions or career opportunities because of caring responsibilities. These numbers exist right now, before the bed shortage reaches crisis point. Before the baby boomers arrive in volume. Before the system runs out of room entirely.
Source: Australia’s aged care crisis is coming for every woman
