Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

By 2004, 94 per cent of aged care facilities had reached the maximum accreditation period of three years, a process that Labor—and Senator McLucas does not want to hear about it; she is not here—failed to do anything about. We have introduced certification standards to ensure the physical environment is appropriate, and the industry has responded to the requirement that by 2008 every aged care resident lives in a home that is appropriate and suitable to their needs.

As well as introducing a quality assurance program and a process of certification to ensure aged care homes reach specific building standards, the coalition also introduced a complaints resolution scheme. Again, Senator McLucas referred to the complaints resolution scheme but did not give credit where credit was due by saying that this was introduced by the Howard government, not by Labor. Labor did nothing; they sat on their hands.

A Freecall number is available so that if any resident or family member or staff member has a concern or complaint it can be raised, anonymously if they wish. We introduced the position of Commissioner for Complaints. Senator McLucas quoted the Commissioner for Complaints but failed to mention that it was the Howard government that introduced that position. The role of the commissioner is to mediate and negotiate outcomes in response to complaints.

So our record is in sharp contrast to Labor’s neglect. We have a range of measures in place to reduce the likelihood of abuse and poor standards of caring. As I say, I challenge the assertion by people on the other side that they had a system that would have even identified that there were problems, because they had no accreditation, they had no monitoring, they had no complaints commissioner and they had no hotline for people to make complaints.

The assumption in the statement by the opposition spokesperson, Senator McLucas, is that the government is not treating the allegations of sexual abuse as a national priority, and that is an outrageous suggestion. I will just list what the Minister for Ageing has done. As soon as the allegations came to light, he was swift and decisive. He met personally with the grand-daughters of the alleged victim at the centre of the George Vowell case to hear their concerns about the treatment of their grandmother’s case. The department is undertaking an inquiry into the way those complaints were handled, and the minister gave the grandchildren an undertaking that he would improve the system.

The minister has made contact with the family of the alleged victim of the Millward nursing home. As has been pointed out, he has called a meeting of his aged care advisory committee, to take place on 14 March. That committee represents key national stakeholders in the industry, and he will be asking its members to consider proposals in the area of mandatory reporting, police checks, improvements to the complaints resolution scheme and the accreditation system, and protection for whistleblowers. He has written to his state and territory ministerial colleagues asking them to a meeting to discuss a collaborative approach to improving the system. That is also an indication that this is seen as a national priority.

You would think from what Senator McLucas said that the minister had done nothing. He has been in the ministry for a matter of a week or two, and he has achieved all this, taking action as soon as he saw that there was an issue.

The minister has established within the department a high-level task force to receive and respond to input from the public about all of these issues, and that feedback will be provided to the advisory committee. This set of actions suggests that he is treating this issue as a national priority. As I said, he has taken all these actions quickly and decisively, with a view to restoring the confidence of the public in what is a world-class aged care system.

I think the most important thing we should say here is that these isolated cases—and, if the allegations are confirmed, this totally unacceptable behaviour—are a very small part of the aged care sector and should not besmirch the armies of staff working diligently in aged care facilities—and they do, many of them above and beyond the call of duty, over and above what they are paid to do—and the army of directors of nursing who run what are very difficult places to run. They are not easy to run, with people with dementia and people who are very frail. I would hate to see a few bad apples spoil the whole situation.

We have a very strong and proud record on aged care. As I said, Labor did not close one aged care facility in 13 years. We closed 200. We set up processes to identify the sorts of things that have now been alleged. I know that the minister is determined to get to the bottom of them as quickly as he possibly can.