Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think that is good enough. According to the Productivity Commission report in 2005-06, over 28 per cent of people assessed as requiring a bed are forced to wait three months or more to actually receive a bed. As I said, it is even worse in my area. I had a case of an elderly woman who was a volunteer within the electorate of Hindmarsh. She was a very active person within the community all her life. When she needed a nursing home bed, one could not be found for her, so she spent three months in the Flinders Medical Centre, in a public bed in a public hospital, until a nursing home bed was found. There have been other cases. Recently, a gentleman was in the Royal Adelaide Hospital for nine weeks because a bed was not able to be found for him within the southern or western region.

This is a pretty phenomenal issue that is affecting a lot of people. People do not need that sort of hassle at that point in their lives. As I said earlier, they need to be treated with dignity and they need to be given the care that they require and not just be shoved off into a public hospital bed with a shrug of the shoulders while saying, ‘We can’t find anything for you.’ And if the department does find something it can be 300 kilometres away and they will tell my office, ‘We did find something for them.’ I do not think that is good enough. This shows the little interest in the plight of aged care within my electorate and around the country. It also demonstrates that the government is full of rhetoric but fails to deliver. I hope that the debate around the bill currently before us leads to a more successful and beneficial outcome for the people it is meant to serve, as they have served us for many years.

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