Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

As I said earlier, it is subject to reporting at any stage by anyone, and that is under the Aged Care Act. If you see neglect or financial or emotional abuse, you can report it under the Aged Care Act. That is just not on. Anybody can report it at any time—there is no problem with that—and they can do so anonymously or confidentially. Added to that, you have spot checks which are carried out. What I am saying is: that is still subject to reporting; it is just that we do not make it mandatory as we are doing in this bill.

Going back to my earlier point about monitoring, obviously you would monitor all the reports made to the department and you would work out the categories they fell into: neglect, emotional abuse, serious physical assault or sexual assault. You would typecast each one and then draw a conclusion, if you could—from the numbers, if they demonstrated that—that perhaps your regime of this bill was working because you were getting more reports of sexual assault and physical assault. I think you can make those deductions. It would depend, of course, on the number and the nature of reports, but that is how you monitor it. You monitor the reporting, across the board, that the department receives. That is all open to Senate scrutiny, through estimates, as I mentioned earlier. I mentioned in this debate that this issue will be the subject of attention, and it will be.