Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney-General update the House on steps the government is taking to address elder abuse and how the government is committed to protecting senior Australians?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forrest for her question, knowing that she makes a great effort in her electorate to try to prevent the types of things that we're about to speak about here in this parliament. It was as part of the last budget's More Choices for a Longer Life Package that the government provided $22 million to tackle elder abuse. That is allocated towards trials of specialist elder abuse units in legal services, more support for family counselling and mediation services and a greater number of specialist staff to provide practical and professional help to older people experiencing abuse, particularly in regional areas like the one the member for Forrest represents.

Why is this so important? We have all heard anecdotes around the types of abuse that occurs for elder Australians, particularly in financial settings, but the essential basis of the problem is that the number of older Australians is growing and the number of older Australians who are experiencing abuse, particularly financial abuse, is growing. In 2016, 15 per cent of the population were aged over 65 years. That was 3.7 million Australians. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that, by the middle of this century, that number will have doubled to 8.7 million people—that is, 22 per cent of Australians will be over 65. In trying to put together policy to tackle elder abuse, I've described this group, elder Australians, as our largest vulnerable minority.

The $22 million that I've just spoken of builds on a $15 million package in the 2016 budget which went to looking at a national prevalence study to inform a national plan on elder abuse. Australia is one of those countries that has not got any professional data or study that tells us about the extent of the problem of elder abuse. That work has been done in the UK, Ireland and Canada. Taking some of the estimates that have arisen in studies overseas, if only five per cent of people aged over 65 experience a form of elder abuse in any given year, that would suggest that 185,000 older Australians could experience elder abuse this year. That might be in the types of settings that the royal commission will look at or it might be totally outside residential or care settings and be in the context of financial abuse. Something that I think is incredibly important to acknowledge is that, whilst the data is limited, the Seniors Rights Service acknowledge that they consider that women are 250 per cent more likely to suffer financial abuse and that, very, very sadly, two-thirds of the perpetrators of financial abuse are close relatives of the older Australian.

One thing that we've been working very hard on, even before the national prevalence study and plan is developed, is a single national register of enduring powers of attorney so that coal-face financial service providers can actually check whether documents are authentic or whether or not they are in their best form or defective. That will be critical moving forward. (Time expired)