Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens support this motion to reprioritise the neglected aged care sector in light of these shocking allegations of sexual abuse in residential aged care facilities. We agree that these allegations must be fully investigated and that any findings should be openly reported. We are also supportive of a complete re-evaluation of the neglected aged care sector.

These latest revelations have created considerable community concern. This is totally understandable, as people have said. There is also widespread acknowledgement that the aged care sector has experienced a number of difficulties over many years. The current sexual abuse allegations are the latest in a long line of criticisms of this particular sector in the community. Back in February 2000, we had the allegations relating to kerosene baths and as a result there was the closure of the Riverside Nursing Home. A year later, in November 2001, a Victorian woman spent her entire inheritance taking out a harrowing full-page advertisement in the Melbourne Age following the death of her neglected mother after an injury she sustained in an accredited aged care institution. In a passionate call for immediate bipartisan action, the woman stated in her advertisement that ‘Australia’s politicians have for too long viewed age care as a political football, preferring to score points rather than legislate and fund to protect and properly care for all Australia’s wise elders’.

In 2004 ongoing problems in the industry led to a departmental review that culminated in the report A new strategy for community care: the way forward. Then last year, as others have mentioned, there was the Senate Community Affairs References Committee report Quality and equity in aged care. Yet, despite this work, the latest allegations indicate that the policies of the government continue to fail to provide older Australians with the quality care that they deserve. Since the shocking revelations aired on Lateline last week, still more cases of abuse in Victoria and Queensland are being revealed in the media and also through reports to organisations that are focused on standing up for the rights of the elderly.

The Greens strongly support community calls for mandatory reporting of abuse of elderly people in aged care facilities and other facilities, as this is the only way to get these cases out in the open to ensure that they can be efficiently and effectively dealt with. Mandatory reporting could, we believe, easily be made a requirement for registration of aged care facilities through the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency. Such reporting is standard in relation to child abuse, and we do not see why elderly Australians should be treated differently and their protection seen as less of a priority.

The Greens are also concerned that there is no national data collection on instances of abuse of the elderly. With over 160,000 Australians in nursing homes and hostels, it is very difficult to evaluate the circumstances of abuse of the elderly and how frequently this is occurring in order to have the appropriate information to ensure that these sorts of incidents do not occur again. The Greens also support calls from the community and the Health Services Union for pre-employment police checks for aged care workers. Older Australians deserve the highest standards in this regard, as many of them are particularly vulnerable. This is required to be matched with legislation that protects whistleblowers so that people can speak out and be protected.

One of the other issues which have impacted on the likelihood of these instances occurring has been the privatisation that we have seen in the aged care sector. Other sectors, such as airlines or the Wheat Board, for example, have bypassed the vagaries and the harshness of the market driven system, but then we have systems like child care and aged care being open to the vagaries and callousness of the marketplace. The Greens consider this to be a hypocritical situation. A direct result of these policies of privatisation in the aged care sector has been concerns about quality as well as issues with respect to low wages, staff shortages and a lack of appropriate professional development training for people working in the sector. Privatisation without adequate regulation and oversight will always be a recipe for disaster. These cases of abuse of the elderly in nursing homes are the latest clear example of such. As advocates for the rights of the elderly said on the Lateline program just last night, if we can get terrorism laws in overnight, we should just as easily be able to pass laws that protect older Australians. (Time expired)