Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I move the opposition amendment on sheet 3080:

(1) Clause 23, page 49 (after line 34), at the end of the clause, add:

(13) An individual has a right to access, at any time the individual chooses, a person designated by the individual, or a person designated by an appropriate authority.

This amendment seeks to make sure that no person in aged care can, in the future, ever be denied access to see the person that they designate, or the person that is designated under the appropriate authority. We need to make sure that, if we're going to embed choice, control and rights for older Australians into this act, one of the most fundamental rights of anybody is to be able to get access to the people they love.

We know we have to ensure the safety of everybody in a workplace, but you have to remember that the workplace we're talking about when we refer to residential aged-care homes is the home of the person. We believe that it is absolutely essential that never again older Australians are denied access to their loved ones for any reason whatsoever. We believe that every home in Australia should be able to provide for a situation where, no matter what the circumstances, an older Australian can always get access to their loved one. To be denied access to see somebody that you care for or love, in the final days of your life, is, we think, completely unacceptable. Therefore, we are moving this amendment to make sure an individual always has the right to access, at any time, the person that they choose, a person designated by them, or a person designated by an appropriate authority, if that individual is unable to make that decision for themselves. I would highly commend this particular amendment to the chamber.

It was certainly something that came up during the inquiry, and it really related to older Australians being able to have the dignity of risk. If older an Australian makes the decision that it is their preferred situation to see a loved one, even if that loved one has got the flu or something that potentially may be harmful to that individual, they should have the dignity of risk to in choosing whether they see them. I would absolutely commend this particular amendment to the house.

I want to put on the record a piece of evidence that was received from Margaret. Margaret was one of our lived-experience witnesses during the inquiry, and she made a comment that really struck home to me. And if we are really, really serious about making sure that we are giving choice and control back to older Australians—and that's the fundamental premise of why we're standing here all day today talking about the details of this bill; it's about making sure that older Australians and their rights, their choice and their control are at the centre of the framework that delivers aged care in Australia going forward—then I think the words of Margaret are really important. Margaret is 76 years old, and this is what she had to say:

The ongoing elephant in the room is the perceived dichotomy between duty of care and dignity of risk. If people were encouraged to spend their whole lives, from babyhood, cocooned in their own homes, never opening the door and venturing into the outside, they might be physically safer; however, we know that would mean they would miss out on most, if not all, of the joys and challenges that risk brings, that life brings—the mental and psychological health that we all aspire to… We want to have the option to choose the right to take risks according to our own priority, not to be wrapped up irrespective of our own. Too often, as people age, they are perceived as having higher and higher needs for priority to go to care rather than to activities and options that give them some entertainment or even joy.

We believe part of that fundamental right and that dignity of risk is for them to see the people they love when they want to.