Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can certainly assure the chamber that everybody on the Labor side is very aware of the importance of this issue and is very concerned about it, as I assume most people in this chamber would be. We are appalled by the revelations of abuse, as I am sure all senators are. I do not think it is appropriate, really, for Senator Patterson to suggest, about those who are unable to contribute to this debate directly because of time constraints, that that in any way means that they are not appalled by the abuse.

Before I get onto the substance of what I want to contribute to this particular matter before the Senate today, I did want to just note a common theme. It is not one that is exclusive to Senator Patterson, but it is a common theme for the government that, whenever they get into a crisis situation or difficulties, they always hark back to what other governments before them might or might not have done, more than 10 years ago. I find it interesting that they are unable to accept that they are in fact the government. They have been the government for 10 years, and the test of this government is what they do, not what previous governments might have done or might not have done. It is about what they do now and how they respond to a situation. I must say it is hard for those on this side of the chamber to accept that this government is taking this issue as seriously as they should and treating it as the priority that it should be.

It is interesting that Senator Patterson went through a list of things that the Minister for Ageing is now putting in place. Every one of those things Senator Patterson mentioned is identified in the Senate committee report into aged care that was tabled in June last year. Every single one of them actually goes to a recommendation in the report. I was listening very carefully to what Senator Patterson said, and I was able to tick off all of those recommendations. It is a bit rich, I think, to come in here and accuse previous governments of not doing enough, try to avoid any of the responsibility of having been in government for the last 10 years and then say, ‘Now that it has been brought to our attention,’ as if it is the first time it has been brought to their attention, ‘we will do these things.’

All of these things in aged care have been the subject of a very substantial Senate inquiry, which produced a unanimous report. Government senators and opposition senators together carefully worded a report that reflected what all senators found during our inquiries into aged care. We were very careful in writing that report not to use words like ‘aged care is in a crisis situation’. We did not want to panic people who are in aged care, or their families.

I do agree with Senator Patterson that there are, on the whole, a lot of very good people in the aged care sector and there are a lot of very good nursing homes—our criticisms do not go across the board. But there is a fundamental flaw in the procedures. Senator Patterson wanted to remind us that this government put in place measures for accrediting nursing homes and for a complaints resolution process. But Senator Patterson failed to recognise that none of those things that were put in place actually identified this abuse. This abuse was identified because one of the staff members eventually made a complaint and Victoria Police handled it. The accreditation process did not identify it and the complaints resolution process did not identify it. It just happens to be that those areas are addressed by two very important recommendations in the Senate report which was tabled last June.

Last October I got up in this place and asked why the government had not responded to that very important unanimous report. It had 51 recommendations that went to things that this government has responsibility for and which, if followed, would have improved the quality of care, the process for complaints, the process for mediation and the process for accreditation—all essential things.

We have heard the minister talk about reviewing reviews, yet there is a Senate report that he only had to pick up and read. You would have thought that the Department of Health and Ageing would have given the Senate report some consideration and looked at the 51 recommendations, and that the department would have been in a position to say whether they were workable recommendations and whether they would go some way to fixing the problems. Other senators saying, ‘The minister has been in the job only a short period of time; give him a go,’ really belittles the process of departmental responsibility and the minister being responsible for the department. Surely the department was not just sitting back and saying, ‘We didn’t know there were any problems with aged care.’ Of course they did, because over the last eight years there have been 34 reviews. Most of them have gone to the nursing process in aged care, but for the minister to suggest that the first action that he is going to take as the new minister, when this abuse has been identified, is to review the reviews is a fairly poor ministerial response to a crisis situation in managing these issues.

In 2002 the Senate Community Affairs References Committee tabled a report into nursing, and in that report the committee noted the acute shortage of nurses in the aged care sector. The committee pointed to evidence which indicated that delivery of quality care was under threat from the retreat of qualified nurses, both registered and enrolled nurses, from the aged care sector. The committee made a range of recommendations directed at improving recruitment and retention of nurses in the aged care sector, including changes to workplace practices and improving the image and training of nurses in the aged care sector.

Unfortunately, when we conducted our inquiry into the aged care sector specifically, in the first half of last year, it suggested that there had been very little improvement at all since 2002. Concerns were raised about shortages of not only aged care nurses but also general practitioners and other people with expertise in older persons’ health—geriatricians, psychogeriatricians and allied health professionals. All of that is detailed and substantiated in the report. There were huge staffing problems identified, and there has been no real turnaround and very little evidence of improvement in the situation since those reports were done.

What does the minister do, apart from reviewing the reviews? He talks about setting up a summit: getting all the players in the industry together to talk about what can be done to fix this problem. The summit very quickly became just a continuation of a normal committee meeting which is an existing process to do that. What happens if we go back and look at the Senate committee report? That is one of the recommendations: to get all the people involved in the process together to look at the accreditation process and the complaints and try to develop a process that will satisfy the industry and ensure an improvement in the quality of care in the aged care sector. It is all there; it has been there.

Senator Patterson challenged us to say that this could not have happened under a previous government. I will not suggest that. It probably could have happened, and in fact it may have. I do not actually know. But don’t we expect some continuous improvement? Isn’t that what policy development is supposed to be about—some efforts by the minister and the department to continually improve things? Things do not remain static; things are meant to improve, and we have an absolute expectation that they should. Part of the Senate committee process is to assist the government in that sort of policy development.

A key recommendation of the Senate committee report goes a long way to addressing some of the complaints we are now hearing very publicly. The committee has heard them all before, surely the department has heard them all before, and I suggest previous ministers have heard them all before. The complaints resolution scheme is addressed in recommendation 16 of the committee report. It recommends:

That the Commonwealth review the operations of the Aged Care Complaints Resolution Scheme to ensure that the Scheme:

• is accessible and responsive to complainants;
• provides for a relaxation of the strict eligibility criteria for accepting complaints;
• registers all complaints as a complaint, with the complaints being categorised by their degree of severity, such as moderate level of complaint, complaints where mediation is required or where more significant levels of intervention are required; and
• provides that the mediation process is responsive and open and that sufficient support for complainants is provided in this process.

The committee heard evidence, and not just single— (Time expired)