John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by congratulating my colleague and friend the member for Hindmarsh for his thoughtful and erudite contribution to the debate. The purpose of the Aged Care Amendment (Security and Protection) Bill 2007 is to introduce new compulsory reporting arrangements with requirements for aged-care providers to report suspected and alleged sexual abuse and serious physical assaults of residents. It also requires providers to ensure there are internal processes in place for the reporting by staff of all incidents of suspected or alleged sexual or serious physical assault, and that the identity of the staff member who reports them is protected and that they are not unfairly treated as a result of making a report.

The bill also gives the Department of Health and Ageing a greater capacity to investigate complaints and to require aged-care providers to correct failures to meet their responsibilities. It also provides for the new Office of Aged Care Quality and Compliance within the department, which will be responsible for this. The other important element is that this bill will serve to replace the current Commissioner for Complaints with a new Aged Care Commissioner to provide an independent mechanism to hear complaints about how the department has responded to complaints and about the conduct of the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency and its assessors. As we know, the Aged Care Commissioner will also have the capacity to initiate its own reviews.

The debate on this very important bill before the House tonight is timely indeed. Its passage through the parliament comes when we are hearing new horror stories about the abuse of patients in aged-care facilities across Australia. An article titled ‘Aged care abuse’, published in the Adelaide Advertiser on 7 February 2007 refers to new allegations of degrading treatment of aged residents. The article refers to shocking allegations of a patient sitting in a urine-soaked bed while eating her breakfast. In this day and age, that is a disgrace. It refers to an allegation that patients’ pressure sores were left open for more than an hour because of staff shortages. That is a disgrace too. It also refers to allegations of severe rashes developing on patients who are incontinent. That, too, is a disgrace.

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