18 19, July, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au to find funding. Any method will raise a squeal from some- one. And for the past 20 years every squeal has been met with a hasty retreat. At the beginning of the year I advanced the idea of tighter means testing so se- niors who owned wealth would be required to use it to pay for their care. The reac- tion Catholic Health Australia received was predictably im- passioned. Many agreed with me. Many did not. That’s completely under- standable. Any floating of tighter means testing im- mediately leaves you open to charges of “coming after grandma’s home”, an idea I don’t relish. But if you wish to reject the option you need to front up honestly with an al- ternative. In this respect, the aged- care royal commission has done a valuable service to the national debate by putting a hard proposal on the table. To raise the addition- al billions we need, the roy- al commission estimates we will need to raise income tax about 2 per cent. For the aver- age income earner that’s near $1700 a year. The royal com- mission anticipates the figure will have to rise steadily as We understand aged issues, but not the answers A ged care is expen- sive, but for how long can we put off the inevitable in- vestment? Ageing and death can be difficult issues. Most of us prefer to distract ourselves from these fundamental real- ities. As a result, however, our political discussion on aged care has been characterised by gingerness, euphemism and indecision. We have failed to grapple practically with a concrete political problem. Since 2002 the government has released four intergenera- tional reports. Another is due this year. All have identified our ageing population as a core national challenge. None has triggered meaningful re- form to address it. But while the ageing “prob- lem” can be fiendishly com- plex in some respects, at its core it’s quite straightforward: if we want to treat elders with respect and dignity in their final stages of life, then we need much more money. Indeed, about $20bn a year more, according to a discus- sion paper just released by the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety. This amount is rarely dis- puted. Although there is some room for debate at the edges, no one credibly disputes that a significant amount of funding is re- quired to fix our ever worsen- ing aged-care crisis. More than half of aged- care homes operate at a loss. In rural and remote ar- eas, that figure rises to al- most three-quarters. Before COVID-19 struck, 15 per cent of aged-care providers sug- gested they would close their doors within a year. The pan- demic is likely to have made things significantly worse. The waiting list for home- care packages has 104,000 names on it. Carers in the sector have always been un- derpaid and jobs are getting much harder to fill. So the national discussion we need to have is not about whether the money is needed but, rather, the fairest means of raising it. It’s a debate we’ve squibbed to date. Despite what modern monetary theorists may tell us, there’s no pain-free way the population ages. The royal commission sug- gests that if we do this, we take a Medicare levy-style approach so it’s safe from tinkering by future govern- ments. This makes sense. Admirably, the royal com- mission doesn’t shrink from the ethical issues with this ap- proach. It notes that an aged care levy, introduced now, would hit younger taxpayers today disproportionably be- cause they would be forced to pay for their own care as well as the care of their el- ders. Older Australians, who had never had to pay the levy, would be the winners. Nonetheless, accepting this reality may be the only way forward. But, to make such a deal more palat- able politically, government should take a deep breath and another look at fairer means testing to help miti- gate the impact on taxpayers. User contributions repre- sent 20 per cent of aged-care spending. Taxpayers pick up the rest. What we require us- ers to contribute is based on an arcane tangle of red tape that aligns neither to the per- son’s wealth nor the value of the services they receive. And we quarantine a po- tential source of billions in funding: housing wealth. It’s only the first $171,000 of the value of a home that is means tested for personal and nurs- ing care. It’s a profligacy we can no longer afford. There is any number of ways we can make it easy for seniors to draw down against the value of their homes. The Pension Loans Scheme, for example, could be made more attractive with better rates and easier access. Of course many seniors don’t have significant wealth of any kind and they too de- serve dignity and comfort. While the injection of funding fromwealthier Australians would help lift standards across the board, significantly more public funding will al- ways be needed. As the royal commission has made stark, there are no easy options here. To better provide for our parents and grandparents, all of us must sacrifice a little —wheth- er through a general levy or through greater levels of private contribution. Either way we need to square up to the challenge and make a call. The alternative is that a fifth intergenerational report comes and goes, and a sys- temwe know is failing many elders continues to crumble. Pat Garcia is chief executive of Catholic Health Australia. This article first appeared in The Australian. Better men make better priests T his week it’s clerical celibacy, thanks to my Gentlemen Cor- respondents. A recur- ring theme in their arguments is that celibacy is only a disci- pline, and that priests should be allowed to marry. Apparently, the Nation- al Council of Priests (NCP) in Australia is overwhelmingly in favour of married clergy. And yet I never hear about any of the NCP’s members getting married. This seems to indi- cate a certain lack of resolve on their part. We tend to forget that chas- tity in singleness isn’t ‘just a discipline’. It’s a moral requirement for any unmarried person in the Catholic Church, and those who are divorced and can’t remarry. And it’s difficult to live out faithfully. This is part- Bishop Richard Umbers and a fellow priest pray over the newly ordained. PHOTO: GIOVANNI PORTELLI If we truly respect and value the elderly, we will do what it takes to look after them when they need care. PHOTO: UNSPLASH Urging an end to chastity for the priesthood is basically to put the ecclesial cart before the horse ly because of the sexual revo- lution. This has left a lot of hu- man wreckage, and certainly these days marriage isn’t for everyone. (Try reading a book called Single for a Greater Purpose which I reviewed re- cently.) One of the best articles on clerical celibacy I’ve ever read is by married priest Fr Dwight Longenecker. He says that clerical celibacy only works if it’s lived faithfully, and it’s the work of a lifetime of prayer and discipline. But when done proper- ly, it transforms a man to the depths of his being – body, soul, and spirit - into anoth- er Christ. Celibacy acts as a ‘graced tool’ to reconfigure him across the whole mascu- line spectrum of life, love, cre- ativity, and power. Fr Dwight says, “Through this process, the Holy Spir- it patiently, step by step, straightens out every kink, pu- rifies every stain, unlocks ev- ery hidden secret, forgives ev- ery sin and remakes the man from the inside out. The Spir- it’s work is like the sculpture chipping away at the block of marble to bring out the mas- terpiece and I reckon celibacy is his sharpest chisel.” Priestly celibacy isn’t a magical cure for sexual ad- diction. It can go horribly wrong in immature, undisci- plined, dishonest and weak men. Seminary authorities can choose to turn a blind eye to entrenched masturbation and porn habits to keep their numbers up. Seminarians who are really struggling can choose to lie about it. Chastity for any person has laws of growth, and the Cat- echism warns us that no-one can think they’ve achieved it once and for all. But Fr Dwight says that the work of this process “is the beauty of the priesthood as I have seen it in action.” “I see it in the lives of my priest friends. I see it at work behind the scenes in the most mundane aspects of church life. I see it in their devotion and calling. I even see it in their disasters, the foolish vanities and their hopeless failures.” You can embrace chaste celibacy with bad grace, and let it weigh you down so that you never get off the ground. Or you can embrace it and learn to fly (with a lot of false starts and bumpy landings). I’d suggest that marriage isn’t the path to better priests. Bet- ter men might be the real an- swer. Dr Philippa Martyr is a Perth-based historian, lec- turer and researcher. She can be contacted at: Philippa.
[email protected] Philippa Martyr Pat Garcia