Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—On Saturday, I as the Minister for Ageing had the honour and privilege to represent the Prime Minister at a celebration for a very special Australian. It was the 110th birthday celebration for Mrs Doreen Washington. She is our fourth oldest living Australian. Mrs Washington is also our oldest living World War I widow. Mrs Washington can proudly say she is also among the 60 documented oldest people in the world. While there have been various claims, the oldest recorded Australian was 114 and, currently, the oldest Australian is 112.  She resides in Victoria.

We joined together to celebrate Doreen Washington’s 110th birthday at a Collaroy RSL nursing home with her friends, staff and family—and her much loved cat, Bungan. It was a very special gathering and an absolute joy to be able to pay tribute to Mrs Washington on her very special day. The Prime Minister and his wife, Therese Rein, sent an official letter of congratulations, which was greatly appreciated. Mrs Washington was thrilled to receive letters of congratulations from the Queen, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the federal Leader of the Opposition, the New South Wales Premier and the New South Wales opposition leader, as well as her local federal MP, the member for Mackellar.

Mrs Washington was born Alice Doreen Rathbone on 24 May 1898 in Rockhampton, Queensland. Like many older Australians, Mrs Washington lived by herself independently until she was 103. As for her secret to long life, it could just be her unconventional and very ‘old school’ Australian diet. While I do not endorse it, and fear my daughter who came with me will use this to her advantage in the dinnertime debate, Mrs Washington eats virtually no fruit or vegetables and loves meat pies and a glass of beer. It has not done her any harm—she still walks and takes no medication. Her late husband, Private Lavington ‘Bill’ Ainsley Washington, served at Gallipoli and the Western Front. He died in 1965 and she never remarried and they had no children. Mrs Washington is a pure link with our nation’s past.

She has seen the growth of Australia as a nation firsthand and, indeed, she is older than the Federation. Remarkably, Mrs Washington has witnessed 23 prime ministers and has seen the development of airplane and automobile travel. She is part of a new ageing phenomenon—what is known as the ‘supercentenarians’— those who reach 110.

Australian academic Dr John McCormack, a senior lecturer in Health Sciences at La Trobe University, is part of international research in this area. He examines the history of identification, recording and documentation of centenarians and supercentenarians in Australia. There are 2,860 Australians over the age of 100 and that is expected to increase to 78,000 by 2055. That is more than the population of the city of Port Macquarie. At the Montefiore Home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs there are an astounding 12 centenarians totalling more than 1,200 years of experience. Currently, there are 2.7 million Australians aged 65 and over. Within 40 years that number will almost triple to around 7.2 million. Australians now have the fourth longest life expectancy in the world—after the Japanese, Swiss and the Icelanders. Australians are living longer because of advances in medicine and our active lifestyles.

This government is investing in aged and community care to service this expected and rather dramatic rise in our elderly population. Over the next four years, funding for aged and community care will reach record levels of more than $40 billion—with $28.6 billion of that on residential aged care alone. Caring for our ageing population is one of the major challenges facing our nation this century and, as a government, we take that responsibility very seriously. No government in Australian history will spend more on aged care and community care than this one. We are very proud of our plans for aged and community care. This is about planning for Australia’s future and the challenges of the 21st century. We want to ensure not only that older Australians can live independent lives and age in their homes—like Mrs Washington until she was 103—but also that they have the option to enter nursing homes if they need to. An ageing population creates so many opportunities; we can learn so much from the wisdom, knowledge and experience of older Australians. As the Minister for Ageing I continue to learn this every time I am out and about meeting our elderly Australians with none more wise and charming than Mrs Doreen Washington.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Mackellar to speak for five minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Mrs Bronwyn Bishop speaking for a period not exceeding five minutes.

Question agreed to.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a great delight to attend Peter Cosgrove House in ‘War Vets Village’, as it is familiarly known in my electorate, on Saturday to celebrate Mrs Doreen Washington’s 110th birthday. When I first sent birthday greetings to Mrs Washington, she was turning 100 and I was the Minister for Aged Care. I am very pleased to say that she now lives in Peter Cosgrove House, which is state of the art and has the best care that could be available, which was a result of the accreditation system that we introduced. Believe me, if she had gone into the old nursing home, prior to accreditation, it would not have been such a happy birthday party. But the thing I believe is so important about celebrating her birthday is that she is, I think, the last surviving First World War widow.

She comes to us with many messages as to how people can live independently for a long time. I went to Mrs Washington’s 102nd birthday party, which was held in her own apartment. The reason she was able to live independently in her own apartment for so long is she had two splendid neighbours, lovely friends. One was Chris Pike and the other one was Fred Leon. Those two gentlemen used to shop for her, look after her, enjoy her company, have a beer with her. What I am saying is: she was able to live successfully at home because she had a community that cared about her, and she had personal contact that kept her alive and vital. She was a bit of a character. She imported the first Mini Minor into Australia and used to drive around in it and was often seen around the northern beaches in it.

Her husband Bill, whom she did not meet until they were working in a munitions factory in World War II, had served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. He was very badly injured. His battalion, the 16th Battalion, sailed from Port Melbourne on 22 December 1914. On 25 April, with a strength of 22 officers and 979 other ranks, they landed at Anzac Cove. At roll call on 3 May, the battalion had been reduced to nine officers and 290 other ranks. Those who survived, of whom her husband was one, were then sent to the Western Front where Private Washington, as he was, was seriously injured when a shell landed in his trench. It wounded both him and a British officer. When the stretcher bearers arrived, they immediately went to treat the officer, but that officer insisted that they attend to Private Washington instead. The officer died, but Washington survived and was repatriated to England for medical treatment. He suffered for the rest of his life from shrapnel embedded in his head.

Bill and his wife, Doreen—she did not like ‘Alice’; his name was Lavington and she did not like that either, so she called herself Doreen and she called him Bill—built a house at Clontarf, where they lived until he died in 1965. She continued to be an independent person, as I said. She travelled a lot. She was alive and active and she certainly does like her beer and also whisky. In fact, when we went to celebrate her 108th birthday party, we went to the Sands at Narrabeen, which has only recently been demolished. It was a good local pub and we had fish and chips and she had her beer and talked about a life that had been exciting for her.

From her example we can learn many things: if you are engaged and active, you can live a long and productive life, but you need friends and companionship. To Chris Pike and Fred Leon, I know she is eternally grateful for their friendship. But if we as a community can always extend ourselves to reach out to people who are living in aged-care facilities and people who are bound in their own home and say they matter just because they are with us, then we will all be the richer for doing so.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A wonderful lady and a national treasure. I am sure, as I call the Treasurer, as someone born in Queensland, he would agree with the context of meat pies and beer as a great diet.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And may there be more of them, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Meat pies?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You should try a pie, Malcolm!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer has the call and is introducing some tax laws.