Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I enjoyed the address by the previous speaker, the member for Gellibrand, on the Age Discrimination Amendment Bill 2006. She raised a concern of harassment in her address. With regard to harassment, I have lived in a world of decent employers, of decent employees and of people who are reasonable and who are watching what is going on in the workplace. My experience has been that, where there was discrimination against or harassment of any person, on every occasion that was drawn to the attention of the employer or those in responsible positions, whether they were the director of an institute, part of the community or part of the family farm.

There are always anomalies and one recent anomaly was the harassment of older people in aged care facilities. My view is that those particular situations were for policing decisions, not for aged care decisions. We are forever going to have problems in specific areas, but where police should be taking direct action that should be done, as against making a whole-of-government or whole-of-industry policy, particularly in aged care.

From my experience in Gippsland, we have the best aged care system, including the people that deliver that system: the nurses and other staff, and the administration. No-one can knock what we do in this country. The care and consideration given to our older people is absolutely sensational. That is why I get really concerned at our overreaction when there are reports in the media about a number of small instances. We do not treat it as a police matter but as a whole of industry matter and jump all over the whole industry, which then makes these people quite afraid about what they do.

I am concerned about the address of the shadow minister, the member for Gellibrand. My fear is that if you were in government you would overregulate to the point where you would discount the ability of people to manage their workplaces.

See this speech in context