Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very sad motion. The content of the motion is sad, as I think is the attempt by the Labor Party to suggest that the government should have 20/20 hindsight in all conditions. I find it unacceptable that the residents of Belvedere Park had to exist in the conditions that they did. The Labor Party, Senator McLucas and Senator Humphries—all of us—find it unacceptable that that happened. The minister, Christopher Pyne, has said that he finds it unacceptable that those people existed in those conditions. But that does not mean that this government is going to get it 100 per cent right 100 per cent of the time.

If you look at the number of residential aged-care facilities in Australia—and there are more than 4,000 of them—currently 14 of them have sanctions imposed on them. That number of 14 is not acceptable to me, to the minister or to anybody else, but it is a reality in our world. The Labor Party seem to be suggesting not only that the government should be using 20/20 hindsight to ensure that we never, ever have one failure in any way within aged-care residential facilities but also that we should just ignore the rule of law when we do so. It has been pointed out that, yes, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal overturned the sanctions on Belvedere Park imposed by the agency. I do not quite know what anyone living in a democracy, where the rule of law is meant to be of primacy, would suggest we should do to ensure that that cannot happen in the future, that people cannot appeal against decisions made against them. This has to be allowed to happen. I think we should be looking at and concentrating on the fact that this was picked up, that the accreditation and spot-check systems actually picked up Belvedere Park and the problems that it had.

Perhaps we should also look at what has happened in the past. Right now the care and safety of residents in aged-care facilities in Australia is the government’s highest priority. But if you look back to the records in Victoria, in particular, you can start with the 1994 Gregory report which said:

• 13% of nursing homes did not meet the relevant Fire Authority standards.
• 11% of nursing homes did not meet the relevant Health Authority standards.
• 70% of nursing homes did not meet the relevant Outcome Standards.
• 51% of nursing homes residents were living in rooms with three or more beds.

This was 1994. Let us move on to the Victorian Auditor-General’s report in August 2006, which was extremely critical of the Bracks-Brumby government’s management of the nursing home structure in the public sector. It is worth noting here that Victoria is one of two states that have very strong public sectors of aged care provision—over 6,000 beds in that sector.

Let us now turn to the current situation, where we have expenditure that has gone from $3.1 billion in 1995-96 to more than $10 billion—established, expected—for 2010-11. Senator Allison pointed out that some planning was needed in this area. There has been some planning: there has been a massive increase in the amount of spending in the aged-care area. We no longer have the situation that we had when Mrs Bishop became the minister, where over 200 homes were closed down almost immediately because they were in an appalling condition; there were not any standards for those homes to meet. This has all been established by our government in the last 11 years. Yes, there should not be one failure, ever, in an aged care facility—we are talking about vulnerable people who need every protection we can give them—but that is not going to be reality. The situation has been found, these people are now in better facilities and, as far as the law will allow, the government is currently doing its best to ensure that this cannot happen again.

Mr Menere is certainly not someone that any government in its right mind would want to let back near aged care residents. But the government must operate within the law. Van Diemen’s Land is not there anymore, unfortunately—it would have been a nice option.