Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think that the residents and the families of residents at Elizabeth House or Plumpton Villa will have found any comfort in the responses that we received today from the Minister for Ageing, Senator Santoro. There are 30 residents in Elizabeth House, most of whom are high care, and 90 residents in Plumpton Villa. If those residents or their families had the opportunity to hear the minister today, I do not know that they would have a lot of confidence in the operation of the aged care that Senator Adams has quite eloquently described. I hope Senator Santoro has an opportunity to listen to it; he might learn something.

The facts are that earlier this year Plumpton Villa failed 22 of the 44 care outcomes that are applied by the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency. As I said in my question, no sanction was applied, and they had a reduced accreditation of a number of months. Elizabeth House, a larger facility, failed 30 out of 44 care outcomes. It is one of the worst reports that I have seen in my time as shadow minister for ageing. But once again we had no sanction applied and a reduced accreditation of five months. A sister agency, Berwick House, failed nine care outcomes this year as well.

As I said earlier, I do not think those residents or their families will take any comfort in the aggressive and defensive behaviour exhibited by Senator Santoro today. They will have no comfort in his attacking me for performing my legitimate role to ask him questions about the actions of the agency, of his department or of him himself.

Elizabeth House was found to be compliant with only 14 out of 44 outcomes. Senator Santoro is quoted in the Ageand I had to bring it to his attention—as defending that situation. He defended the fact that there was no sanction implied, and he said that no-one was at risk. If you read the report, look at the comments on medication management. The report says:

There is no system in place to ensure that residents’ medications are managed safely and correctly. Management have not conducted medication management audits for some time. Not all registered staff are aware of safe and/or correct practices when administering medication.

That sounds pretty risky to me. In terms of nutrition and hydration, the report says:

Residents’ nutrition and hydration needs are not monitored. Residents identified with unexpected weight gain or loss are not referred to appropriate health professionals.

In terms of pain management, the report says:

Management cannot demonstrate that they are assisting residents to be as free as possible from pain.

Maybe those residents are not at risk, but it sounds like risk to me.

Then we move to Plumpton Villa, which failed 22 care standards. Senator Santoro, the Minister for Ageing, jumped up and said that he would not be verballed by my asking a question. My question was pretty straightforward. I said that Plumpton Villa was a sister facility of Elizabeth House, that it failed 22 care standards and didn’t the report say that there were insufficient staff and at times the assessment team could not locate any staff—straight out of the report—that the assessment team heard people moaning in pain and observed a high number of skin tears amongst residents—straight out of the report. Then I asked if the minister recalled defending his decision to not impose a sanction on this facility because it was getting its act together. I said that he was defending his decision, and that is when I think he suggested that I was verballing him.

The Minister for Ageing then gave an absolutely unequivocal guarantee that the facility was providing top quality care. A colleague of mine rang a family member of a current resident since the minister gave that unequivocal commitment. Last week when that family member arrived at Plumpton Villa they could not get in, there was no-one at reception and there was no staff member in sight. When they got in, the staff were chatting to one another for about 10 minutes. They did say it does smell better, and that is good. But it is still understaffed, according to the family member of the resident in the facility. (Time expired)