Capitalism fails the aged care test

Written by: Ned K. on 21 February 2026

 

Capitalism in Australia cannot provide decent aged care for elderly citizens. When the new Aged Care Act came in to force in November 2025, elderly Australians were assured that the Act would provide a system that worked for the elderly when they needed either home care or residential care.

The federal government did take a small step for elderly people in care by agreeing to fund significant wage increases and better conditions for aged care workers. Aged care workers and their Unions had been campaigning for years for respect and recognition for aged care workers whether it be home care or residential care.

 

After scathing findings by the Royal Commission a few years ago, the Labor Government had to do something. However, the funding of better wages of care workers was only one aspect of the problem.

 

The Age newspaper reported last week that "aged care has become a masterclass in overpromising and under delivering - while quietly saving the federal budget billions of dollars"

 

For an elderly person to actually receive appropriate care, there are several hoops they have to step through.

 

1. Answer a series of questions in an interview over the phone to an over-worked government worker. If the elderly person or their family member making the call on their behalf misunderstands a question or gives a wrong answer by mistake, they may find themselves ineligible to advance to the next step towards arranging appropriate care

 

2. If a person gets through the phone interview, they then have to wait for an assessment which The Report On Government Services found took 27 days for 50% of applicants and for 10% of applicants, they had to wait up to 172 days

 

3.  Then the third stage is the assessment or sometimes reassessment. The assessments are now "guided" by algorithms with care needs systematically understated. This results in cost savings for the government and in some cases a finding that a person is no longer to receive any more funding.

 

4. If a person is approved for a home care package or residential care, the Age reported that "half of all seniors waited up to 204 days after approval to be assigned a home care package, with10% waiting up to 326 days"

 

5. The Age further reported that up to 60% of home care packages provided less assistance than was promised.

 

More than 200,000 people are waiting for aged care assistance in one form or another. Delays in approval of aged care packages and delays in providing care after approvals are determined are saving the federal government more than $5 billion a year. The Age says "put another way, every day of delay saves around $13.3 million".

 

Government Priorities Are Elsewhere:

 

Australia has an ageing population and an increasing population as well.

 

The federal government prefers to serve its imperialist masters by pouring money into AUKUS to the tune of $380 billion dollars, while state governments pour money into supporting big business such as racing car events and the like or more roads to service the needs of large corporations who want their goods and services moved quicker to realize profits from the surplus value created by workers overseas in some cases and interstate in other cases.

 

The system of capitalism compels governments to show that they prioritize the needs of big business rather than the needs of the people, including the elderly.

To make matters worse for the elderly many of them in need of aged care will be resided in an aged care facility owned by a private-for-profit provider such as BUPA. So, the profit motive impacts negatively on the elderly in the last stage of their lives, despite them paying taxes all their working life!

 

The only solution to a decent life for the elderly is to bring the system of capitalism to an end and build a society based on the needs of the people, not the profit goals of capitalism.

Neglect – Where Current Funding leaves Aged Care

 

Written by: John G. on 5 May 2022

Neglect was the title of the interim report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety issued in October 2019. 

The full report issued in February 2021 confirmed nothing had changed. Their recommendations remain lists on pages of their report.  

Families of Aged Care residents, Unions and various others are campaigning for the situation to change. Strikes and protests have become features of the aged-care landscape in the last year. Appeals for changes delivered through delegations to Canberra, meetings with ministers and shadow ministers, with senior public servants, protests in Canberra and around the country, have fallen on deaf ears. 

Be careful of Government-Sponsored Elders Consultative Bodies

Organisations of seniors themselves have been cold shouldered by government to an extent, through the government-sponsored dominance of COTA, the Council On the Aging. COTA Australia is pointedly a Council ON, not OF, the Aging because they don’t have one elder from an organisation composed of the aged themselves on the board.  The COTA Australia Board is composed of a range of current or former public servants, business people and policy experts. COTA Australia boasts that it speaks for the aged “on around sixty national government, business and civil society advisory and policy development bodies at any time, meets regularly with Federal Ministers and senior public servants, and is the leading media spokesperson for the rights and interests of older Australians”.

Its not like elders’ organisations are hard to find. Just a quick review in NSW identifies numerous elders’ membership organisations. A lively Combined Pensioners & Superannuants Association of NSW has 65 suburban and regional branches, 14 Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Community branches as well as publishing a monthly journal, The Voice since 1958. Other organisations active in NSW include the Association of Independent Retirees (A.I.R.) Ltd, Carers NSW Limited, Older Women’s Network, Retirement Village Residents Association, War Widows’ Guild of Australia NSW Ltd and a number of retired union members organisations. Such organisations are shunned or shunted through the COTA filter in consultations and negotiations with Federal government. 

Current government funding, with limitations on co-payments, doesn’t provide non-profits with enough to pay the wages that worker’s lives demand. The funding shortfall is consistent across aged care services. Funding levels don’t support the needed staffing, nutrition needs in homes, necessary hours of care for each resident, nor liveable wages, and that’s not even considering profits creamed off by private operators and the more intense neglect prompted by it.

More money is needed. 

The Royal Commission reported in 2019 that total government funding of aged care needed to increase by at least $10 billion per year, around 0.5% of GDP.

The recommendations themselves may have shortcomings. Commission proposals normally fall short. Nonetheless they would be a good start to overcoming the heavy neglect currently imposed on the elderly. 

Neither Major Party is saying they’ll put up the money needed

The Royal Commission report put forward two ways those funds could be found. The Australia Institute issued a response identifying three other ways the money could be found (See Addendum below). The Australia Institute proposals lean more towards making the monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates pay, taking back a bit of the billions they are exploiting from Australia’s workers. 

Not one of these options has been taken up by either the Coalition or Labor.

The Coalition has budgeted to increase funding by $17.7 billion over 5 years, $33.3 billion short of the mark without looking into effects of inflation.  

Labor has put forward policy with an unstated amount of funding. Labor declares they would fund a wage rise conditional on the outcome of Fair Work and NSW Industrial Commission hearings, and fund 24/7 nursing staff at all nursing home facilities, without comment about AINs or Personal Carer numbers.  

ALP policy funding depends on ‘independent’ umpires, both bosses’ commissions. They can be relied on to be ‘responsible’ by dudding the workers and aged. No doubt there will be a scrap, crumbs of a rise, but nothing like 25%. Funding of it is a bit unclear with no promises to provide $10 billion a year, the least needed to improve the sector. 

The Greens have a more cogent policy heading towards a comprehensive one for improvement of aged care services and other support for people across the board. On Aged care the Greens propose $260 million extra for the home care area to eliminate wait times, a 25% wage increase, 30 hours a week care in aged care homes (up 50%), a nurse on 24/7, staff/resident ratios, phase out for-profit operations and some other elements. 

They propose their policies be funded by a 40% superprofit tax on all corporations with more than $100 million turnover in Australia, plus implementing a mining super tax originally designed by the Henry Tax Review, as well as rejigging the petroleum super profits tax. Their proposals are aimed at monopoly and foreign imperialist corporate capitalists not getting the lion’s share of the benefits from exploiting the publicly-owned resources and the workers in many industries.

The Greens calculate those financial measures would reap $430 billion over a decade. They claim it’s all verified, in so far as that’s possible, by the Parliamentary Budget Office. 

That’s plenty to pay for a hell of a lot more than aged care needs, to provide for a qualitative lift in many services, public sector wages, and building up the country.  

But the Greens policies are mirages, no chance of them getting to implement them but their proposals are a valuable outline of what can be done.

Not losing means fighting

Meanwhile on the ground, families, elders themselves, and workers are maintaining the rage and fighting for the situation to be changed. They are confronting the resistance of monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates who have government in their pocket. 

They are on the move and not waiting for governments or courts to throw them some crumbs. They have seen what waiting for politicians to act gets them, sweet FA. 

As new hardships hit people, no doubt some concessions will be made to slow down the struggle against neglect of the aged and the hardships faced by the workers providing them care. 

The issue of show us the money is front and centre. Those in the fight sense there is money to burn around. More will identify that the monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates have the billions that are needed to look after the aged and those who care for them. 

The struggle can only gain strength as the target, the big corporates, becomes clearer in people’s sights

Meanwhile more and more people, families, elders, workers and many across the community are realising the truth of the maxim: If you don’t fight, you lose!

See Addendum below:

Addendum

Various Ways to Fund a $10bn-a-year Improvement to Aged Care Services

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety suggested two ways to fund the $190 billion a year of improvements it recommended to aged care services.  

Increase the Medicare levy by 1%. That would apply at a flat rate to all taxpayers. People on low incomes pay the same portion of their income as the rich. Basically this would make the people pay when their money’s short. It doesn’t make the rich monopolies pay.

Adjust existing personal income tax rates and thresholds. Anyone earning under $170,000 per year would pay less new tax than under a 1% flat-rate levy (those above that income would pay more). It’s fairer but everyone shells out and the rich get let off lightly and the corporates pay not a zac. 

The Australia Institute in a report Funding High Quality Aged Care Services published in May 2021 identified 3 other options which are more pointedly aimed at getting the funding from the rich and the monopoly corporates.  The full report can be seen here.  

Retain the 37% Personal Income Tax Bracket. The Commonwealth government legislated income tax cuts for high-income earners to start in 2024. The Coalition and Labor are committed to them. The biggest cuts, the elimination of the 37% tax bracket, applies to incomes between $120,000 and $180,000 per year. It reduces federal revenues by at least $16 billion per year. Over half the total benefit is captured by the richest tenth of society. 80% of savings are captured by the richest 20% of taxpayers. Stopping the cuts would hit some wealthy Australians but let the monopoly foreign corporates off. 

Make the Rich Pay, Take Back some of the Billions they Exploit from Workers

Increase taxation of investment & capital income. For example, capital gains income for investors is taxed only half the rate of wages and salaries. Dividends from shares are also taxed at much lower rates. Most of the money foregone by government is pocketed by the richest 5% of taxpayers, owners of a disproportionate share of financial wealth. Halving those capital gains and dividend preferences, increasing the capital gains inclusion rate to 75% from 50%, and allowing franking of 50% of imputed company taxes instead of 100%, would increase federal income by over $10 billion per year, enough to fund aged care reforms. Again, it hits wealthy Australians but the rich monopoly and foreign corporates are let off lightly. 

Increase Company Taxes.  The corporate share of national income reached an all-time record high during the pandemic – over 30% of GDP. But company taxes declined, thanks to various credits, incentives, and loopholes. Measures to strengthen company tax collections (higher levies on major banks, reforms to petroleum taxes, elimination of access to offshore tax havens, and proportional revenue taxes on global digital giants like Google and Facebook) would raise over $10 billion a year. This one seems targeted at the big monopoly and foreign corporate capitalists. 

A bit more work is needed to clarify the best way to go but the last couple, more heavily taxing investment and capital income, and increasing company taxes for the big monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates, fit the bill of Making the Rich Pay and taking back a bit of the billions they are exploiting from Australia’s working people.  

 

 

$23.70 an hour, One Aged Care Worker's Bitter Resignation

(Above: It's common for workers to have close relations with people in Aged Care)

Written by: John G. on 5 May 2022

A friend has been an aged care worker for a bit more than a year. She’s been providing services to support aged and disabled people to stay in their homes. 

She has just given her notice, leaving her permanent part-time position early in May.

Her story is a trajectory experienced by many in the industry, heralding even greater staffing crises in aged care and disabled services ahead. 

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Service Quality and Safety recommended 25% wage rises and $10 billion extra each year from government to fund a swag of improvements over what it titled ‘Neglect’. Unions are chasing wage rises at the mercy of various commissions and tribunals operating within government guidelines at the beck and call of the big monopolies.  

In her small, dispersed, non-profit operation, where workers gather in one place about three times a year, they don’t know each other. Work is allocated and communication with supervisors is through email and messaging on company phones. There is no union and the conditions work against workers organising to stand up for better wages and conditions together.   

She asked for more and has been ignored until she submitted her resignation

She can’t continue on her present wage. She wrote to her boss asking for a wage rise a few weeks ago and heard nothing.

She has a substantial mortgage, a bit less than half a million, about 10 years along the repayments.  She has two young kids in school, one at primary school. Her husband works long hours as a mechanic. They are Australian citizens of Indian ethnic/cultural background who’ve been here for more than 15 years.

They are currently paying off her car. 

Their money is not going far enough. They suffer grievously from inflation while their wages stagnate. They are selling her 3-year-old car and downgrading to an older smaller car, a move her husband’s work and skills facilitate, and have confidence they won’t get a bomb. It’ll ease the pressure with a $10,000 or so improvement in their situation, clearing the debt on the car with a bit left over.    

She went into the work for all the right reasons. She and the family need the money to live, and if it was better, to thrive. She also oozes empathy. She loves the people she supports, plies them with sweets and some with of her cooking. Most make the job a delight, a part of her social life. 

She does cleaning, shopping, laundering clothes and having a chat to ‘her’ friends and clients. She has to fill in reports about her observations of the people whose homes she goes to, whether they ae better, stable or declining, their mental state, etc. She has trained to work with people with dementia and Alzheimer’s, aggressive people and people with other mental problems as well as the frail aged and disabled of various types. The reports have her somewhat responsible for their health, skills and responsibilities. 

She separates ‘her’ people into the ‘friends’ and clients categories. Some are lonely, living away from family and having lost much of any social circle they had as they move through their 80s. They and a number of others are happy to welcome and embrace her as a support, as an equal with her own life and value, etc. Others are a bit aloof, welcoming the support but approaching her a bit like a servant. She’s always clear the latter ones are just a couple of the two dozen she supports each fortnight. 

My friend’s been quite torn about putting in her resignation. She would miss her ‘friends’ and clients. It is a bitter decision, forced on her by pressures weighing her family’s efforts to meet their needs against her desire to sustain her connections with the friends she has made, and the satisfaction she gets through her work supporting them.  

Lack of connection between workers leaves her few options 

The way the workforce is organised leads to their isolation from each other. 

The boss and supervisors communicate distribution of the work and other information to helpers or carers by email and phone messaging. 

Workers, who are universally female with the bulk of migrant background, hardly know their supervisors. They meet supervisors at inductions and uniform distribution, the rare occasions where they get supplementary supplies of PPE etc, and through messaging and emails. They sometimes talk on the phone. Supervisors follow workers daily activity through a geolocation app on their work phone. 

Workers only meet each other at training sessions early in their employment, and then periodic staff meetings, allied to PPE distribution and refresher courses, which come up about 3 times a year. Workers hardly know each other.  How do they get together to pursue improved wages and conditions? My friend is acutely conscious of her isolation from her work colleagues. 

Throughout the pandemic, the workers have met a few times, reinforcing each other’s dedication to looking after the vulnerable people whose homes they cleaned and who they worked to help. But the staff meetings were very few. There is no union and no real prospect of one arising within that small non-profit organisation. It would have to come from stronger organisation in the larger workplaces leading dispersed workers into organisation and activity. 

Exercising what power she has, withdrawing her labour 

She is not powerless. She has decided to exercise the only power she currently has. She has moved to withdraw her labour, not temporarily, but permanently.  Given that home care workers are in such short supply and she has offers of additional work from her second job, her position has its strengths. 

Given the parlous state of the economy, of leaving the security of permanent, government-funded work in an industry with severe staff shortages, and going to casual insecure work as an ABN worker albeit at a much higher rate, has its weaknesses. 

The lack of collective organisation limits her options and weakens her position. She judges she is in no position to change that. The low rates and poor conditions of employment reflect the weaknesses of the workers’ organisation, confronting their employer one out.   

Employment, pay and conditions oppressive

She is employed by a non-profit, religiously-based enterprise engaged in government-funded/subsidised schemes. Some clients are charged co-payments on subsidised services. 

She gets about $1,200 for doing around 40 hours a fortnight plus travel using her own car between the homes of a couple of dozen people. With unpaid travel time between clients and allowing for extra petrol costs, her hourly rate actually works out at $19.50 or so an hour, even without the travel time to and from her home. 

She has to pay for petrol from home to clients and back home. She gets just 75c for travel between clients. She gets nothing for her travel from home to her first client and back home. On some days she is sent 50 kms to her first work. She spends about 8 to 10 hours a fortnight, equal to about 20%  to 25% of her work time, travelling unpaid to and from her work and getting just $150 for her travel between houses she works in, while she’s now spending about $250 or more a fortnight on petrol. 

She feels the sting of the injustice of that alone, as well as her unmoving wage rate. She is vocal about the need to be paid much more for travel, enough to cover petrol and something to cover wear and tear on her car and pay her wage for travel between clients, maybe 15 hours travel time at $1.75 or $2 a km or $350-$400 a fortnight plus wages for 8 – 10 hours. 

The support workers also suffered shortages of PPE and delays in safety training for the pandemic at times last year. 

The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended a 25% wage rise for aged care workers. That would push her wages up to just on $30 an hour. A bit more than that, and a hefty adjustment to her travel payments, would have her stay in the job and battle on, still not in clover but able to get through and ease the financial squeeze on her family for now.  

My friend has a second cleaning job which pays just under $40 an hour as an ABN worker, no paid super or sick leave, and all the other insecurities and shortcomings. She expects she would clear about $32 an hour with those shortcomings allowed for. She has been offered much more time with that contractor, and she knows they have shortages of staff and plenty of work. Its an attractive, if a bit insecure, option while nothing else is offered to her in her home support job. 

Her boss has asked for a paid meeting before she goes. She is geared up to more than air her case. But she is clear, and completely frustrated, that it’s in their hands. She really has no power other than by walking away. She will walk away or, , if an offer is made, possibly take what they offer. 

My friend’s situation hasn’t left her with the opportunity to get together with her co-workers. She doesn’t have a route to take the fight up to government and the monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates who have government in their pocket. She feels impotent, unable contribute to improving aged care and disability services, unable to build organisation of people’s power against the corporates’ power.  

But she’s not happy about it. She won’t forget the choices she’s been forced to confront and make. 

She’s filthy about her choices, ready to listen to and act on leadership standing up for people against the cashed-up monopoly and foreign imperialist corporates and their government.

The task of building opportunities to fight on a wider front is a task the working class and other forces for the people face. A lot of workers are in action taking that up. 

With greater hardships coming down the economic pipeline, more struggle lies ahead.

 

Aged Care Workers’ Struggle Intensifies

Written by: Ned K. on 11 April 2022

Aged care workers are preparing for protected industrial action against major aged care providers. They have been in negotiations with major providers such as Southern Cross and Anglicare (so -called not for profit providers) and for-profit providers such as Allity and Bupa.

They are demanding substantial wage increases and improved staffing levels. 

 

These workers are Carers and Support Services workers who work in the kitchens, laundries or clean the aged care complexes,

 

Their action for substantial wage increases has received little media attention and little attention by the federal politicians. The latter are diverting public attention to the Fair Work Commission which is soon to announce its Decision on a 25% wage increase to Award rates by some Unions. 

 

The Morrison Government refused to commit to fully fund any Award rate increase while Albanese said he supported a fair wage increase for Aged Care workers.

 

The Aged Care workers preparing for protected industrial action are relying on their collective strength to win improved wages and conditions, rather than relying on the outcome of the Fair Work Commission Decision on Aged Care Award wage rate increase (if any).

 

The Award rates are some of the lowest of any industry. A Level 1 is on $21.61 per hour and a trained Care Worker on Level 3 has a base rate of only $23.39 per hour.

 

The low wages combined with poor staffing levels and high workloads result in high turnover of labour and contribute to a low level of residential care for aged care residents.

 

The large private providers in aged care are profit driven and charge residents like wounded bulls through the upfront Refunded Accommodation Deposit they require from most residents. Some of the private for-profit aged care facilities are owned by private equity corporations!

 

The only way the aged care industry has been able to staff residential aged care has been to rely on new migrant workers to do the work. The "carrot" for these workers is that if they last at least 12 months in employment their visa status can progress faster towards permanent residency. So, they just put their heads down and do the work in the hope they can last the distance. 

 

Continuous employment becomes their primary objective and their low wage levels are secondary.

 

However, this is changing now as cost of living increases and the high workloads in their jobs have seen thousands of new migrant workers join their Union and join in the current collective struggle for significant improvements in pay and conditions.

 

Their time has come. Politicians of both major parties can no longer afford, electorally speaking, to ignore their demands anymore.

Colbeck's Curse: Continued neglect of Aged Care

 Written by: Paul K. on 23 March 2022

The Royal Commission's Report into Aged Care Quality and Safety was released over 11 months ago. Since then we have seen continuing neglect and deliberate avoidance of addressing key recommendations within the report that were aimed at improving the conditions of both the aged and their carers. This simply reconfirms the fundamental principles that condition a response to aged care within capitalism.

The primary issue is that the aged are seen as non-productive and hence have very little relevance to the ongoing production of wealth and private wealth accumulation within capitalism. They are treated as a burden and this is reflected in the policies and lack of support for both the aged and their carers. Relevant points relating to developments since the Royal Commission report include:

1. The absence of focus and discussion on the aged.

2. The neglect of the aged and their carers during COVID – some of the worst examples of neglect in relation to quarantine and immunisation.

3. A complete failure to address the totally unacceptable remuneration for aged care workers. This failure includes the completely inadequate once-off "bonus" announced by Colbeck and Morrison on February 1 of an amount ranging from $300 (for persons working less than 15 hours per week in home care)(, up to $800 (for persons working more than 31 hours in residential care.)

4. The staggering contrast of the impact of COVID on the aged between government and private providers. This arises directly from a number of issues including: a focus on user pays, the emphasis on private enterprise and profit ahead of meaningful attention to better outcomes for the aged and their carers, the associated attempt to reduce costs through the lowering of standards and requirements in relation to aged care.

 Since the report was released, there has been a significant lack of effort to ensure the public are aware of developments in this area. There is the occasional article in the popular press that will highlight a specific failure on the part of the health care "system" but no clear focus on continuing to address the Commission's recommendations. When articles do appear, they reveal appalling neglect. The COVID pandemic is an example of this.

 In an article by Anne Connolly in the Age in early January titled "As Omicron moves in, Australia is facing a predictable tragedy in aged care", she points out that "just one third of elderly residents have received a COVID booster from the government" and "if the federal government had vaccinated them in April last year under its 'priority' listing as promised, every one of them would have been able to receive it by now".

Anne Connolly also points out that at the time of her writing the article, almost 1,000 aged care residents had died from COVID, and that there were more than 1,600 people in aged care infected with COVID, with 80 lives lost within the previous two months. With under-vaccination and rapid spread of the virus with the "opening up" of society, the situation is now much worse.

She states: The Aged Care Royal Commission set out comprehensive recommendations to avert such a disaster by increasing staff numbers and paying proper wages, ensuring up-to-date vaccinations and giving families regular access to their loved ones.

 This abysmal neglect also highlights the government's focus on private providers and an unwillingness to hold them to account. As the Minister for Aged Care Services, Richard Colbeck admitted, "Some of the private contractors who received millions for administering the initial vaccinations and the boosters … may have taken time off over Christmas". This reliance on private providers and a failure to hold them to account is further highlighted by the fact that the above statistic on booster vaccinations may not be accurate as the government has not been collecting data.

The comparison between private providers and State run providers clearly demonstrates the failure of capitalism to address the needs of the more vulnerable in society. In an article in the Age on the 15th February titled "Why Victorian public aged care homes were spared the worst of coronavirus", Clay Lucas states "Coronavirus has ripped through private aged care in Australia over the past two years, but one form of aged care has been only lightly touched by the pandemic – publicly run homes in Victoria". He also points out that the 179 state-run homes in Victoria have more nursing staff, higher wages and are often located near other health facilities. The State-run providers have significantly lower rates of infection and deaths.

Some important comparative statistics provided by Clay Lucas include:

• In 2020, three public sector residences contracted COVID with no deaths, while private and not-for-profit homes recorded 2000 infections and 655 deaths.

• In 2021, three residents of Victoria's public aged care homes died. 

• Up to mid-February this year (2022) with the rapid rise in infections, Omicron has killed an average of 17 aged care home residents each day, with just three people in total in Victoria’s state-run homes having died.

• 0.1 per cent of public facility residents have died since the pandemic started compared with approximately 2 per cent in private homes.

• There are no ratios for nursing staff to residents, or minimum standards in private and not-for-profit aged care.

• Public sector homes are generally attached to a larger health service of some form, and most are staffed almost entirely with qualified nurses. A typical private or not-for-profit aged care home is 70 to 80 per cent staffed with personal care assistants, who have far less health training than nurses. There are also grossly insufficient Personal Care workers.

This information in no way suggests that we can resolve the problems of Aged Care and Safety by moving towards public provision within capitalism. This will not happen in any substantial manner. The focus within capitalism is to safeguard the rich and their ability to continue to accumulate wealth. This is the essence of the capitalist system and is exemplified in the ongoing emphasis on user-pays in the provision of an increasing range of public services including the principle needs of health and education.

The neglect of aged care and aged care providers occurs while public money is readily spent on reinforcing the alliance of the wealthy with their peers. The recent decision to spend billions to purchase nuclear powered submarines is a glaring example of this.

 

 

Corporatised Religion

 Written by: John G. on 21 April 2021

The deaths of 46 aged care residents at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne suburb Fawkner raised failures and financial and operational arrangements in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Covid deaths at other church homes in Sydney, the Dorothy Henderson Lodge run by BaptistCare and Newmarch House run by Anglicare, suggest these may not be aberrations but systemic failures. They also raise the issue whether behind this lies the entwining of religious enterprises in corporate capitalist systems of purchasing labour power and production and sale of care services. 

If St Basil’s and the others are aberrant individual failures, then further regulation and a tight system of compliance auditing by competent independent inspection authorities would be the response, if one trusted a capitalist government and others to create such improvements for people. History identifies that such trust would be misplaced.  

Where these are the product of systematic failures, even the supporters of this economic system accept solutions that require a rebuild of the system to effect necessary change. 

Judgement of bad apple failure or systemic problem can only be made by examining the manner of service delivery by church run operations more generally than those of St Basil’s and Greek Orthodox Church. 

Major religious institutions have extensive operational “commercial” arms. Most operate as Legal Trusts which provide no transparency as to their financial and operational affairs. Some are more centralised while others like the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches operate through thousands of separate operational enterprises. Their charitable arms sometimes provide public operational and financial reports.  Below are insights into a couple of church operations and their nature gleaned from publicly published reports. 

Wesley Mission’s Commercial Operations 

Wesley Mission produces a public annual report. 

Originally operating from one Sydney church it has broadened to a limited extent with 85% of its staff now Sydney-based. The public accounts provide an opportunity to look into this church’s operations as a service providing enterprise in this capitalist economy to see how much institutions have been drawn into capitalism. Relevant details are outlined here: 

Wesley Mission’s operations, workforce and finance by the numbers

Wesley’s revenues in the 2020 financial year were just shy of $230 million, including income from sale of services of $117.5 million and government grants of $97 million. Donations and legacies were less than $8 million or 3.5% of the church’s total income, a tiny amount of church operations.  

The cost of purchasing labour power directly was at least $163 million though the accounts don’t exclude that being larger. Surplus for the year was $9.6 million. 

It has a huge asset base of $489 million, with liabilities of $269 million, the bulk of which is care residents licence agreements of $173 million. Wesley Mission’s net capital value is $220 million. 

It had 2,251 employees, 813 full-timers and 938 part-time and 500 casuals, 73% women and engaged an army of 4,592 volunteers for 92,598 hours proudly boasting they saved $4,231,729 in wages. The voluntary labour represented just 2.5% of all labour power used by the church in their operations. 

The figures involve the church operating service provision by purchasing labour power from 2,251 wage workers for $163 million supplemented by volunteer labour equivalent to 10 full-time staff. In addition, some ‘clients’ were employed in packaging and other industrial production,

The tiny portion of both income and labour derived by donations in all forms, as against the 97.5% of labour-power purchased for the provision (production) of services, reveals how deeply the church has been integrated into the capitalist system of production, purchasing labour power for its production.

The integration includes the alienation of the labourer from the product of that labour, the commodity of care. 

Fundamentally the Wesley Mission is operating as a capitalist with 97.5% of its labour power purchased, employing wage workers. 

Religions as Capitalists

There is no basis for expecting any difference with larger institutional churches. In fact the big bazookas of church capitalism are the Catholic Church with its extensive school network and its massive St Vincents operations across the whole country as well as Diocesan Trusts , the Anglican Church of Australia Trust Corporation, the Presbyterian Church of Australia Property Trust, Uniting Church Trust Association Limited, and other religious groups running schools and limited care services also ending up in capitalist relations purchasing wage labour.   

The Catholic Church, one of Australia’s largest employers   

 

An internal Catholic Church research paper on employment, “Our Work Matters” published in November 2017, identified that the Catholic Church purchased labour power from approximately 220,000 people by compiling data from 3500 agencies or 99.5% of its affiliated organisations. 

 

The total combined employed Catholic workforce amounted to 1.8% of Australians selling their labour power.  This gives some idea of the scope of the integration of this Church alone to wage labour purchasing in Australia. It was a bigger employer than the big 4 banks combined, all local government across the whole country, just 23,000 short of the Commonwealth public service,  and more than the Woolworths group at the time. 

 

77% of the employees of the Catholic Church are female. 84,801 of the workforce was full-time, 92,700 part-time, 40,301 casual with some whose status was not confirmed. Pay and conditions of 89% are covered by enterprise agreements and awards. 

 

These numbers exclude priests, brothers and nuns, who number just another 7,988 in the Catholic workforce apart from the Bishops. 96.4% of the labourers utilised by the Catholic Church are not religious officers. Just 5.3% of the Catholic workforce is utilised in pastoral parish and diocesan activity. 

 

The Church purchased the labour power of 194,823 wage labourers in its education, health, aged care, and social services provision. That was 94.7% of the labour force whose status was identified that the Church utilises. 

 

The Catholic Church overwhelmingly operates as a capitalist in purchasing the labour power it uses to produce services.

 

The Wesley Mission and other religious-run service operations are purchasing wage labour to produce services, commodities, sold in aged and disability care homes, contracted to government for provision of shelter for the homeless, teachers at religious schools, etc. To the aged, disabled and homeless, the staff and others are carers, not engaged in capitalist production as productive labourers. However, to the religious institutions they are employees, wage labourers producing commodities – care, education, etc. 

 

The religious institution exchanges a part of its capital for their labour-power to produce the services, as does a capitalist in metal manufacture exchange part of its capital for labour power to produce manufactures, for instance. 

 

The religious institutions are thoroughly integrated into the capitalist mode of production. 

 

Notoriously, religions are tax-exempt and their charitable and not for profit arms operate tax-exempt, while the case of St Basil’s sees millions transferred to the Church, supporting leaders living in luxury. The tax exemptions largely remain though religious enterprises are thoroughly capitalist in their mode of operations, and they have accumulated enormous financial, land and other assets. All assets are the accumulation of values, representative of accumulated commodities, the products of labour previously engaged in production of commodities.

 

Those assets represent the religious institutions’ accumulation of past labour exploited from wage workers as surplus value. We can conclude churches generally are now exploiters of labour on a grand scale.

Bosses luxury lifestyles accompany capitalist mode of production. 

 

The relations of production of the Catholic Church are reflected in the sumptuous lifestyles of some of its leaders. The former Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart lived in an upmarket Kew mansion, pictured above, valued at $3 million when listed for sale recently. This was a downgrade on the Archbishop’s residence for decades until the 1980s, Raheen, now the home estate and mansion in Kew of the billionaire Pratt family.

 

The church also spent $872,000 on a beach house with bay views in Dromana for Archbishop Hart, which he now personally owns after buying it off the Archdiocese for $1.12 million in 2017.

 

So much for vows of poverty.

 

The scandal in aged and other care across the land following hard on the heels of exposure of abuses in Church-run orphans and children’s homes, as well as their educational institutions, involves religious institutions and other capitalists all engaged in a capitalist system of labour power purchase to provide services and thereby profit, accumulating capital. 

 

This is a systematic failure in production of services for the people. It requires systematic change, a rebuild of the care and other service provision. 

 

By the nature of the capitalist system, with its army of wage labourers tending to eliminate from the field any other alternative means of securing labour power necessary for producing goods or services other than by the purchase of labour power as capitalist not consumer, religious institution have been drawn into the capitalist mode of production. 
 

Capitalist competition’s tendency to drive costs down runs services down

 

The outcome in capitalism is competition’s tendency to drive down costs, reduce staffing levels, reduce spending on facilities and inputs like food and medical services. Religious institutions are thoroughly integrated into that capitalist mode of production in their care and educational service provision. 

 

The costs are borne by the people. 

 

The catastrophes at St Basil’s, Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge, as well as Greek Orthodox leaders reported adoption of capitalist lifestyles, is the tip of a very large iceberg in the care, education and social service provision industries run by religious institutions.  The case of the Catholic Church workforce confirms that systemic problem with the mode of production of these services. 

 

As these incidents and the aged care industry are investigated, more of these capitalist characteristics will be exposed. 

 

To resolve the catastrophic tendencies at stake in the provision of care services, much more than tinkering within capitalist service provision will be needed.

 

It confirms the need for an independent working class program for the well-being of the people with independence and socialism driving the elimination of the trends capitalism sets in train, ruining the lives of people.