Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Vulnerability is bimodal in Australia for all of us. Peak vulnerability occurs at two points in our lives—at the very start of our life and right at the end of our life. This is pertinent because it's something that I saw and dealt with as a general physician. When I practised, I did encounter, on many an occasion, patients who had suffered elder abuse. They were overwhelmingly women and they presented with all kinds of ailments, but overwhelmingly most of these patients were in fact malnourished. In some cases they were cachectic, which means that they were wasted. And they were universally fearful of discussing their experiences.

Currently in Australia there are around 4.2 million people who are 65 years and over. They comprise around 16 per cent of our population. That number is expected to double, to nine million, over the next 25 years. These older Australians, or seniors, are our parents, our grandparents, our aunts and our uncles. They deserve, as they enter a more vulnerable phase of their lives, to remain protected and to feel safe wherever they are, whether that be in the community or, in the case of some Australians, as they transition to residential aged care.

The issue is that elder abuse is more prevalent than we think. It affects one in six community-dwelling elderly. This is based on a survey that was done in 2021, the National Elder Abuse Prevalence Study. What is most concerning, however, is that there is a real taboo around disclosing the experience of elder abuse. That is because it tends to be perpetrated by other family members, often children. It is much, much worse in patients or people who come from non-English-speaking backgrounds. They overwhelmingly feel the shame associated with this and often do not even have the language to describe what is actually going on at home.

So it falls to two groups to try and identify, or at least screen for, these problems. One is the aged-care sector and the second is the healthcare sector. I want to thank the member for Werriwa for bringing forward this motion and discussing the problems in aged care, which we are all familiar with, but the healthcare sector is a different beast. There are a lot of people around and multiple opportunities for health encounters both with doctors or allied health professionals or nurses, but you really do need to be clued in and you need to have structures in place. This speaks to the need for having health justice partnerships.

I was privileged enough in April this year to attend the launch of a successful pilot program by Eastern Health and the Eastern Community Legal Centre. The Attorney-General was present. The launch basically demonstrated that a successful health justice partnership, where a legal centre partnered with a major health network in Victoria, could lead to positive outcomes in the sense that they were able to identify and help at least half of all people who were brought forward as suffering from elder abuse. There were two programs that were highlighted. One was called the Rights of Seniors in the East, ROSE, and the other one was called Engaging and Living Safely and Autonomously, also named ELSA. That was a partnership with the Oonah Health and Community Services Aboriginal Corporation, because this is intersectional. It affects all communities, multicultural as well as mainstream.

We were thoroughly impressed with this program and, as such, the attorneys-general recently decided that they would invest in a national plan to ensure that we can keep this work going. In that respect, the Australian government—we, the Albanese government—have committed $4 million towards a campaign to educate the community on how to recognise abuse in the elderly. There's a national free call phone line—1800 ELDERHelp—and you can also go to the Compass website find further information, educate yourselves and educate your family members. I would urge you all to do that.

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:29

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