Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of the answers by the Minister for Ageing, Senator Santoro. When the minister took on the Ageing portfolio earlier this year, I posed the question:

Is he going to be a minister who fudges and hides behind his bureaucrats or is he going to be a minister who is prepared to call a spade a spade and decry mismanagement and scandal? Is this a minister who will seek to sweep things under the carpet, as so many of his predecessors have done?

It appears so. Sadly, this minister continues to fail the test. Older Australians and their families—indeed, the Australian community—expect that our government will ensure that aged-care facilities are held to the highest standard and that the community can have confidence in the residential aged-care assistance for their loved ones in their greatest time of need.

We have seen previously—and earlier this year there have been more—revelations of elder abuse and failures in our aged-care facilities. Today we have seen the minister again refuse to act, refusing to impose any penalty on an aged-care facility reported to have failed 30 of the 44 care standards. Elizabeth House Private Nursing Home failed 30 of the 44 care standards—70 per cent of the care standards put in place to ensure that frail older Australians receive quality care and are treated with dignity. The care standards failed included residents not getting the clinical care they needed, medication not being managed properly, pain not being effectively managed, intimidation of families complaining about the quality and standards of care, and staff shortages.

Australians in aged care deserve more than this. Working Australian families deserve more than this for their loved ones. The Herald Sun reported on the matter:

A MELBOURNE nursing home has been allowed to remain open despite failing to comply with basic standards.

The article goes on to say:

The decision comes after two other homes run by the same company—Glenn-Craig Villages—were also accredited despite major failings.

In the latest case, auditors were concerned the home’s high-care residents—

and I remind senators that high-care residents are some of our most vulnerable and frail residents in aged-care homes—

were not getting enough food and fluids and those showing unexpected weight loss were not referred to medical professionals.

Auditors found medications were “not managed safely or correctly”, while residents may have been left in unnecessary pain.

The report goes on to say:

The audit team that examined the home said its accreditation should be revoked.

So why, despite this recommendation, despite this facility’s almost complete breaching of care standards, has the minister failed to act? As I have already said, Elizabeth House Private Nursing Home is not the only facility that has failed to meet standards. This aged-care provider operates two other facilities, both of which have failed to meet care standards and many of the problems of which are clearly long running—some, as we have heard, dating back to 2005.

We are getting no answers or solutions from this minister in this place. All we get from this minister is failure: his failure to boost confidence in the sector by taking on a Labor amendment that would have provided for one unannounced annual spot check on all residential aged-care facilities in Australia on all 44 care standards. This government needs to do more than just concede that standards are not being met. It needs to ensure that they are met and that those facilities that are not meeting their obligations, not meeting standards of care, will be dealt with properly. How can the Minister for Ageing allow the continuance of substandard care in aged care when he has the capacity to stop it? How can he, on his watch, allow identified substandard care providers—and I do not wish to be accused of verballing the minister—time to get their act together, when poor care of the elderly is happening here and now? How does the minister live with the knowledge that frail Australians suffer whenever there is any delay in addressing the serious issues surrounding the abuse of the elderly in aged care?

Every day of delay in dealing with these serious issues continues the suffering of needy Australians, suffering that is completely unnecessary. Residents should not have to moan in pain for days because staffing levels are inadequate. The elderly do not deserve to be treated in such a manner as to ensure numerous tears to their fragile skin as an everyday matter of living in these places. The elderly do not deserve to be shunted aside and forgotten in this deplorable way. The minister has the capacity to change this, but it appears he does not have the will. Australians in aged care are an important part of our community. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.