Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I feel privileged to have been in this chamber to hear my friend and colleague the member for Gilmore give that speech on behalf of her community and be the voice for the people she represents. They chose very well at the last election. She's an amazing advocate. You can't help but be moved by those stories.

I want to start my contribution on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Improved Home Care Payment Administration No. 1) Bill 2020 with the quote that the member for Lyons finished his contribution on, a recent statement from the royal commission:

Had the Australian Government acted upon previous reviews of aged care, the persistent problems in aged care would have been known much earlier and the suffering of many people could have been avoided.

As the representative of a community with loved ones in aged care who suffered through the spread of COVID-19 I, too, regret that action wasn't taken earlier to avoid the suffering. I also regret that when this House moved a motion of congratulations and thanks to the people of Victoria today for what they have done to get through the second wave of coronavirus, which has been nothing short of magnificent, there wasn't appropriate acknowledgement from either the Prime Minister or the Treasurer about the role that inadequacies in preparation in aged care played in so many of those tragic deaths.

Perhaps it's that failure to acknowledge mistakes and lack of action that is partly the impediment to taking action. We won't get anywhere until we acknowledge what is wrong and then fix it. We have to acknowledge that, over the last three years, 30,000 Australians who loved and were loved died waiting for care that they had been approved for, that Australians assessed as needing high-level packages for residential home care are waiting three years to get that care. There surely isn't a person in this place privileged to represent their community who hasn't received a phone call, an email or a visit from a distraught person not understanding why they have been approved for a home-care package that they desperately need but they can't get it or from their families who are beside themselves to get the care for their parents or their loved ones so that they can continue to live a life of dignity in their home. They have been approved for that care, but they are waiting three years to get it. Surely it moves everyone who has the privilege of serving in this place the way it moves the member for Gilmore, the member for Lyons and everyone else who I have heard speak today about people in their communities. There are 100,000 Australians waiting for a home-care package. Announcements don't deliver home-care packages. We have draft recommendations from council assisting the royal commission recommending that the government clear the waiting list, not because it is a number of 100,000, but because it is 100,000 people waiting to get that care that they need to end their lives in dignity and comfort. Surely, as human beings, that's what we owe the other citizens of our country.

It was a year ago that the interim report was titled Neglect, and I know that other contributors to this debate have mentioned it, and that is because it has to be mentioned. A title of a report into our aged-care system in this country that we are so proud of titled Neglect is shameful. The first recommendation of that interim report, over a year ago, was to fix the home-care package waiting list. There were 100,000 older Australians waiting then and there are 100,000 older Australians waiting now for home care. The government doesn't need to wait for February next year for that recommendation to know that it should have acted before, and it needs to act now.

The people who have been brave enough to give evidence to that royal commission are amazing, and we all owe them a debt of gratitude. There have been more than 10,000 submissions and experts after experts backing in the experience of individuals to say that this is a system that is broken. This is a system where apparently 50 sexual assaults a week happen in residential aged care—50 sexual assaults a week. We can't stand for that. How could we stand for that?

It's just extraordinary that under this government there was no COVID plan specifically for aged care, and there's been no acknowledgement of that failure. So it's no wonder that there are so many people—too many people—who don't believe this government when it says that it will fix the problems. It is no surprise that there are so many people—too many people—who just don't believe this government at all and don't have any trust in politics or politicians. That has to change. There are 1.2 million Australians and their families who rely on us here in this place making that change—the people on those benches over there making that change and those of us on this side of the parliament pushing them to make that change. It has to happen.

We shouldn't have to rely on the families of people in aged care to make that happen, but so often we do. We saw the second recommendation of the interim report of the royal commission directed towards chemical restraints in aged care. One of the reasons that occurred is because of brave people like my constituent Edgard Proy and his parents, who he loves so dearly. When you hear him talk about them, you just know that they are, along with his children and his wife, the most important people in his life. Monica Proy is a woman who spent her entire life working as an advocate for the elderly and as a carer in aged-care homes. But, cruelly, as happens to so many older people in our community now, as she aged she began to suffer the symptoms of dementia. Her loving husband Silvio and the family tried all they could to keep her at home. They didn't want her to go into aged care—you might suspect they knew a bit about what happens in aged care—but when Silvio had a stroke the family had to make that decision. Last year, Edgard spoke to SBS and participated with Human Rights Watch in a documentary to try to stop what then happened to Monica happening to other people.

They had no choice but to put Monica into an aged-care facility and put Silvio with her, but Monica's dementia got worse. She would wander around away from her room and vocalise loudly. Those behaviours led to her nursing home heavily medicating her and trying to reduce her frustration. They chemically restrained her. It took the family quite a time, not surprisingly, to realise what was being done to their beloved mother and grandmother. Edgard is absolutely clear that the cocktail of drugs his mother was being given made things worse. Not having a great grasp of the English language didn't make things any easier. Edgard knew something was wrong, because, even with dementia, she hugged him, she laughed and she giggled, but the medication meant she just couldn't be consoled. As he said to me in an email, the medication took the life out of her. She'd lost her power with the dementia, and then the drugs took away her capacity to deal with the dementia. Human Rights Watch said last year that a third of people of people in nursing homes are on sedatives and 32 per cent are on antipsychotic drugs. We know that Monica's story is not unique, but it was powerfully unique to her family.

Do you know what the Proys did? To some extent they're lucky that they were able to do this, but it was a sacrifice. They had to employ a carer to go and help care for their mother while she was in aged care and had to detox from those drugs. It took two years for those drugs to get out of her system with the support of her family, her wonderful carer and the workers at the new facility in Mount Eliza where she now lives. Edgard knows that the people who were prescribing the medication were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had, but, as he said to SBS, if they're not trained in looking after the elderly, specifically people living with dementia, what hope do those people have? Is it any surprise that draft recommendation 71 of counsel assisting the royal commission is that antipsychotic drugs need to be prescribed by appropriately qualified medical practitioners?

If anyone is reading this speech or watching this speech, I encourage you to google 'Edgard Proy', and you will find the video and see his mother now. Edgard says that his mother has been medication free for over a year. She and Silvio are together in a new nursing home—the family are still paying extra for her to have a carer—and the sparkle is back in her eyes. Edgard says his mum's emotions are heightened: 'She's not giving up. When I hug her today she's at peace.' Edgard's now an advocate with Dementia Australia, and clearly a very effective one.

Of course, after the interim report the government brought in some regulations. There were negotiations with the shadow minister about those regulations to deal with the use of chemical restraints. I'm pleased that that happened, but, given that the draft recommendations of counsel assisting the royal commission include recommendations about chemical restraints, it is clear that there is still an issue. They include recommendations about introducing new requirements regulating the use of chemical and physical restraints—comprehensively regulating them—informed by reviews of quality-care principles, reports of the parliamentary joint committees on human rights and on the operation of the NDIS:

A person receiving aged care who is the subject of a restraint should be readily able to seek an independent review of the lawfulness of the conduct.

I couldn't agree more.

We know, because of the royal commission looking into the absolutely inadequate and failed preparation and response of this government at the time into COVID in nursing homes, that the government need to come back to this parliament by 1 December to report on what they have done. I am calling on the government and the minister, when they do that, to report about how often chemical restraints are now being used. That information should be available to the public. We should know whether or not the reforms that were introduced are working and what else needs to be done. We owe it to Monica, we owe it to Edgard and we owe it to every other person in aged-care facilities, because we all have parents and we're all going to that age one day. It's not a problem of numbers and dollars; it's a problem of what we value in this society. Do we value older Australians or don't we? I know what my answer to that question is, and I'm pretty sure it's everyone's answer. So we need to match those words with action.

I just want to conclude my contribution today by saying how amazing people that work in aged care are. They don't do it for money; they do it for love. They are people who do a job that can be without reward, apart from the fact that they are loved and are loving others. We don't do enough in Australia to value people who work in our care economy, from the start of life to the end of life. As the royal commission has said, we need to do more for the staff in aged care. I look forward to being part of doing more and bringing in those reforms.

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