Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, on a number of occasions, Senator McLucas, and I will come back to that in a moment. With great respect, you are not well-informed about the background of this matter.

Senator McLucas has asked whether there were any unannounced checks of the Belvedere Park facility between 2003 and 2007. I want to give an answer to that question. There has been a long history of the department monitoring this particular facility. Between 1998 and 2002, there have been five separate occasions when the Department of Health and Ageing has imposed sanctions on Belvedere Park. During that period there were frequent unannounced visits. In fact, on 12 June 2002, there was an unannounced visit; on 7 October 2002, a further unannounced visit; on 15 November 2002, an unannounced visit; and on 12 December 2002, an unannounced visit. Again, in 2003 on 6 June, on 18 June, on 31 July, on 10 September and on 11 November there were unannounced visits. The operators of this facility could not have been under any mistake that they were being very closely watched by this department and its accreditation agency.

In 2004 there were some changes in personnel and an apparent attempt by the home concerned to try to lift its game. However, the agency continued to ensure that there were spot checks on this particular facility. An unannounced visit occurred on 19 January 2005, another on 21 January 2005 and one on 10 February 2005 as well. On 16 and 17 November 2005 there was an accreditation site audit over a two-day period—a comprehensive examination of how well this particular facility was attempting to lift its game. On 28 April 2006 there was a site visit in response to a complaint, where some of the things that Senator McLucas has referred to were raised, and it resulted in a number of actions being taken by the agency to press the particular provider to lift its game. There was a further support contact visit to the home in November 2006, and there was a further visit on 3 July 2007. There is no question and it is simply untrue to suggest that the government has failed to act in respect of this particular home. Comprehensive, repeated actions have been taken to monitor the activities of that home. This indicates great pressure put on these providers to lift their game.

Senator McLucas raises the additional question of the way in which Mr Graeme Menere was involved with this facility, and the suggestion is that Mr Menere’s involvement as an active participant in the administration of this home has been ignored in some way by the department. Again, this is not true. Of course, under the system of health care standards that we inherited, there was no capacity for the department or the accreditation agency to prevent a provider from being accredited if a person with an indictable offence to their name was involved in the administration of that facility. We fixed that in legislation in 2000, effective as of January 2001. The trouble is that, unfortunately, Mr Graeme Menere’s involvement has not been a formal involvement on the record in that home. He has not been a director of that home; he has not been on the board of management of that home.