Morrison Government believes that warehousing older Australians until they die is the appropriate function of aged care in Australia?

An estimated 221,300 people in Australia entered aged care services between 2009–10 and 2018–19. 

Months before the COVID-19 global pandemic hit, in fact on 31 October 2019, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety published an interim report titled "Neglect" which stated in the foreword:

As a nation, Australia has drifted into an ageist mindset that undervalues older people and limits their possibilities. Sadly, this failure to properly value and engage with older people as equal partners in our future has extended to our apparent indifference towards aged care services. Left out of sight and out of mind, these important services are floundering. They are fragmented, unsupported and underfunded. With some admirable exceptions, they are poorly managed. All too often, they are unsafe and seemingly uncaring. This must change..... 

We have found that the aged care system fails to meet the needs of our older, often very vulnerable, citizens. It does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care for older people. It is unkind and uncaring towards them. In too many instances, it simply neglects them.

A little over nine months later this is the Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's opinion of the aged care system his government administers. 

 Financial Review, 14 August 2020:

"On the days that the system falls short, on the days that expectations are not met, I'm deeply sorry about that. Of course I am," the Prime Minister said.

"I know that everyone who is involved in the process who is trying to meet those expectations is equally sorry.

"I think we’ve got to have a reality check about this. I think that it’s great that Australians have high expectations.”….

Mr Morrison said the cohort of Australians seeking aged care had changed significantly since Howard government-era controversies, including revelations of residents being bathed in diluted kerosene.

"We're dealing with a system that is now dealing with a very different demand.

"It is very much at a stage of pre-palliative care. And that is a very different proposition in terms of the facilities, the workforce, the clinical needs, to what it was 10 years ago.

"The system needs to be adjusted to meet that."

This is what his Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians & Liberal Senator for Tasmania Richard Colbeck stated on the floor of the Senate on 31 August 2020:

"There are about 60,000 Australians who die in residential aged care on an annual basis unfortunately, but that's one of the functions of residential aged care." 

Here are some social media comments from older Australians and their families concerning the predominately for profit wharehousing being endorsed and funded by the federal government:

"As older woman something struck me after conversation with other local women in my age group. Everyone expressed horror of residential aged care. Some have told children they do not want this to happen, some expressed an intention to suicide - active or passive. Australia 2020".

"So agree".

"Exactly my sentiments, I've told my children not to ever consider putting me into residential care. I'd rather find a good drug dealer or Euthanasia Medical Specialist to take care of things."

"My 87 year old Mum agrees. Been in the family home for over 50 years, says the only way she'll leave is feet first."

"I certainly will if faced with the prospect of incarceration in one of these hellholes".

"Told my sister and her kids to take me up the back paddock and shoot me before going this way."

"Absolutely, older women I know are all going to "take care of it" for themselves, when the time is right and won't be told what to do and when by others but are afraid they may not have the capacity or the means to do it for themselves they are afraid."

"I’ve had this conversation with my mother. She begged me, in tears, and told me she’d ‘sort it out’ if it came to that."

"Nearly 70 and still in own home. Will NOT go into aged care. Am first generation that can see what “living forever” via meds etc looks like and really has little appeal for me. Voluntary end of life must be looked at but anyone choosing nursing home has absolute right to decency."

"I'm 40, and have worked in an aged care home. I have also told my kids not to put me in a home, that I would rather die with some dignity."

"My mum told me to knock her on the head with a frying pan. I told her I wouldn’t go to jail for her, she could just live with me. Aged care has been a disgrace for decades. It is a genuine fear for seniors & a heartache & fear for families with no other choice."

"Once I'm passed looking after myself is when it's time to go. Seen to much damage done by evil neglect to those who are forced to live past their "best before" date." 

"My parents, who are in their 80s, have both said that they would rather suicide than go into an Aged Care home. I have told them that they can move in with us and we will get the in-home care that they need, but they won't consider this. It makes me sad, but I understand them."

BACKGROUND

Residential aged care for the 221,300:

More than two-thirds of these were an admission into residential care—this was split between permanent (almost 70,000) and respite care (over 83,500).

Of all people entering aged care, around 1 in 5 people were admitted to home care (almost 43,800) and 1 in 10 were admitted to transition care (over 24,000).

Almost 60,800 people were admitted to permanent residential aged care for the first time in 2018–19. [Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, GEN aged care data]

In 2017-18:

More than 3,000 aged care providers in Australia deliver care through nearly 9,000 services (outlets). The sector comprises private (for-profit) providers alongside community-based and charitable providers, and state and territory and local government providers. The mix of ownership type varies across programs, with the largest proportion of for-profit services in the residential care program (41% of residential aged care places are managed by for-profit providers).

Collectively, these services supported the care needs of more than 1.2 million people in 2017–18, at a total cost to governments of $18.4 billion. Consumers may also be asked to contribute to the cost of care. In residential aged care, for example, the cost to governments in 2016–17 was $12.1 billion, and residents contributed a further $4.7 billion (ACFA 2018). [AIHW , Aged Care Snapshot, 11 September 2019]

• In 1997-98, the average age of entry into residential care for females was 82.8 years; by 2008-09 this had increased to 84.3 years. For males, over the same period, the average age of entry into residential care increased from 79.5 years to 81.6 years.

• In 2000-01, the average age of people admitted to Community Aged Care Packages was 79.7 years. By 2009-10, this had increased to 81.4 years. Between 2003-04 and 2009-10 the average age of people admitted to Extended Aged Care at Home Packages increased from 80.8 years to 82.2 years.

• Given there is no clear trend in the median length of stay, the increasing age at entry will result in demand for services not increasing as rapidly as the population is ageing. [Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry Caring for Older Australians from the Department of Health and Ageing December 2010, excerpts]

In June 2018 the majority of older people in residential aged care were 75 years and over – 81% of all men and 90.5% of all women [Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, GEN aged care data]

Fourteen years ago the bi-annual proportion of persons over 65 years of age dying in residential aged care in Australia was estimated at between 34% (high level care only) to 53% (including both high and low level of care plus respite care). [Broad, J.B. et al, 2015, “Likelihood of residential aged care use in later life: a simple approach to estimation with international comparison”, p.3]

The Minister:

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 2020:

Colbeck was appointed to the Senate in 2002 to fill a vacancy. In 2016 he lost his seat after being demoted to fifth place on the Coalition ticket in Tasmania, but unexpectedly returned in February 2018 after the parliamentary eligibility crisis forced Stephen Parry, a dual British citizen, to resign.

The Prime Minister:

The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 2009: 

Towke won easily. On the first ballot, he polled 10 times as many votes as Morrison, 82 votes to 8, who was eliminated in the first round. His victory meant that a Lebanese Australian would represent the Liberal Party in the seat where the Cronulla riot and revenge raids had taken place 18 months earlier, in December 2005. ''The campaign against me started four days after preselection,'' Towke said.....

Though Towke would eventually win his legal war, the damage had been done. The adverse media coverage set in train a reaction within the party to get rid of him. A second ballot was ordered, in which the balance of power was shifted away from the grassroots in Cook and to the state executive. The second ballot gave the preselection to Scott Morrison. Amazing. He had been parachuted into the seat over Towke's political carcass. Morrison clearly had backers who wanted him to get the seat. ''These guys were prepared to ruin my life,'' Towke said.

Oh, the NSW National Party stupidity - it burns!

Koala in search of a tree at Iluka, Clarence Valley in the Northern Rivers
PHOTO: supplied

In the NSW Northern Rivers region, even before the devastating 2019-20 bushfires ripped through hundreds of thousands of hectares destroying forests and wildlife habitat, our koala populations were in decline due to rural/regional tree clearing, timber logging, local traffic and dogs.

Now post-fires, faced with a possible 70 per cent loss of the entire state's koala population and functional extinction on the horizon, a local National Party nitwit goes to the media with this statement.

ABC News, 2 September 2020:

A North Coast National Party MP has threatened to move to the crossbench if the State Government forces farmers to search for koalas on their property.

Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis says a proposed bill that would force farmers to look for koalas before conducting any work on their land is ridiculous.

Mr Gulaptis says people in regional areas know how to care for their koala populations better than those in the city.

"We know how to manage our koalas in the regions and now we're being dictated by people in the city who decimated their koala population and [are] telling us what we need to do."

McDonald's & Tantex Holdings spent a lot of money defending the indefensible over the last nine and a half months

Tanya Manteit-Mulcahy owns Tantex Holdings,
which runs several McDonald’s stores in Brisbane
Picture: Jono SearleSource: News Limited 26 November 2019

The Advocate, 31 August 2020:

A Queensland McDonalds franchisee has been ordered to pay $1000 in compensation to a worker denied toilet and drink breaks.

Tantex Holdings, which operates six of the fast-food restaurants, has been ordered to pay former employee Chiara Staines compensation by the Federal Court on Monday.

In its published reasons for the decisions, the court found Ms Staines had been denied a 10-minute paid drink break on all but three occasions while working at a Queen St Mall restaurant in Brisbane from May 8, 2017 to June 15, 2019.

McDonald's staff have been entitled to paid 10-minute drink breaks under McDonald's Australia Enterprise Agreement 2013, which was approved by the Fair Work Commission on July 24, 2013.

According to the agreement, all employees are entitled to a 10-minute drink break when they work a shift between four to nine hours.

If they work more than nine hours, staff are entitled to two 10-minute breaks.

This is in addition to a meal break if working longer than five hours.

Ms Staines told the court her work was fast-paced, hot with a constant smell of food and the environment was stressful and demanding, physically and mentally.

"Ms Staines was denied a short respite from, what was by its nature, a mentally and physically demanding job," Justice John Logan said.

Brisbane businesswoman Tanya Manteit-Mulcah is the sole director of Tantex Holdings, which conceded it had not provided Ms Staines with the allowed breaks.

"The drink break for which clause 29 of the Agreement provided was a workplace right," Justice Logan found.

"So, too, for reasons explained above, was a right, within the bounds of reasonableness, to pause for a drink of water or to go to the toilet during a shift a workplace right."

This matter appears to have been before the Federal Court - Fair Work Division for the last nine and a half months. 

The Statement of Claim reportedly alleged that Tantex Holdings breached multiple workplace laws and accused managers of engaging in coercion and threatening conduct.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's constant pushing to open state borders is not supported by people of voting age according to late August 2020 Newspoll

Young or old, male or female, regardless of political affiliation, it seems residents in the five states surveyed by Newspoll in late August 2020 are firmly on the side of state premiers keeping their borders closed at this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Australian, August 2020:

Popular support for Scott Morrison has fallen for the first time since the height of the pandemic as he takes on the states over their refusal to budge on border closures that are holding back the national economic recovery. 

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australians shows the federal political contest tightening between the two major parties, with Labor recovering ground to post its highest primary vote since April and levelling the political playing field with the Coalition. 

Primary vote If the federal election for the house of representatives was held today, which one of the following would you vote for? If uncommitted, to which one of these do you have a leaning? 

One Nation numbers have been broken out from 'Other' from October 25, 2016 Newspoll is conducted by YouGov 

The two major parties are now deadlocked 50:50 on a two-party-preferred basis, marking a four-point turnaround in Labor’s favour over the past three weeks. 

The slide in support for the Prime Minister and the Coalition comes on the back of universal and overwhelming support among voters for the premiers’ right to close borders and restrict entry if and when outbreaks occur. 

A special poll conducted for The Australian shows 80 per cent of Australians support border ­closures if the health situation demands it. The results reveal the difficulty for the federal government as it faces off with the states, with the exception of NSW, which it has been blaming for holding back the national economic recovery.....

Support For State Premiers Over Border Closures Amongst Survey Respondents

South Australia - 92 per cent 
West Australia - 91 per cent 
Queensland - 84 per cent 
New South Wales - 76 per cent 
Victoria - 74 per cent.

Support For Premiers Over Border Closures by Political Party

Labor - 88 per cent
Coalition - 73 per cent
Greens - 88 per cent.

Support For Premiers Over Border Closures by Gender

Men - 78 per cent
Women - 82 per cent

Support For Premiers Over Border Closures by Age Group

18-34 years - 86 per cent
35-49 years - 82 per cent
50-64 years - 79 per cent
65 years & over - 73 per cent

QAnon conspiracy theories end up in the Federal Court of Australia

The Guardian, 29 August 2020:

In May, Anne Webster, a first-term Nationals MP from Mildura in regional Victoria, quietly launched a defamation action in the federal court over a series of posts and videos about her on social media site Facebook. 

According to a statement of claim seen by Guardian Australia, posts made about the federal MP in April claimed, without any factual basis, that she was “a member of a secretive pedophile network” who had been “parachuted into parliament to protect a past generation of pedophiles”. 

Within weeks of the case being filed, Justice Michael Wheelahan made urgent orders for the defendant to remove the posts, labelling them “vile” and describing the legal action as “one of those exceptional cases” where the court could order the removal of the allegedly defamatory material before a trial. 

“Given the potency of the allegations [in the] online posts, the scandal created may well reach quarters that cannot be known … this is one of those rare cases where damages may not be an adequate remedy,” Wheelahan said. 

Webster’s case was filed against a woman named Karen Brewer, an Australian who the court believes may now live in New Zealand. Though she is basically unknown outside of the online communities in which she spends much of her time, Brewer – which may not be her real name – is one of Australia’s leading conspiracy agitators. 

Brewer’s personal Facebook page, which has thousands of followers, is a petri dish of beguiling theories and vicious abuse. In the steady stream of live videos and posts she feeds to her thousands of followers each day, Brewer rails against vaccinations, fluoride, and the cabal of Freemasons she believes controls Australia’s parliament, judiciary, media and bureaucracy as part of an extensive paedophile protection racket....

Though Australia’s conspiracy landscape is complex, increasingly the thread that unites these groups is a messy Antipodean adaption of QAnon, a sprawling and baseless internet conspiracy theory born in the online messaging board 4chan in 2017. 

Wide-ranging and preternaturally bewildering, QAnon adherents are loosely tied to the belief that, as the Guardian put it this week, “a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires run the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children”. 

Evangelical in its zeal, adherents believe a multitude of spin-off theories, including that Bill Gates is using Covid-19 to implant microchips in people and that the ongoing lockdown in Victoria is a cover for the premier, Daniel Andrews, to install 5G technology throughout the state. 

Though Brewer is not outwardly affiliated with QAnon, many of her beliefs line up with the conspiracy. Webster’s defamation claim, which also includes her husband and a not-for-profit women’s organisation called Zoe Support Australia that they founded together in Mildura, alleges the posts falsely accused the couple of founding the women’s organisation to “access young children on behalf of a secretive pedophilia network”.

To date, social media companies have had little success controlling the growth of QAnon on their platforms.

Last week, Facebook announced it had taken down or restricted 790 groups, 1,500 ads and 100 pages tied to QAnon, and blocked more than 300 hashtags used by its followers on Facebook and Instagram. It followed Twitter’s announcement of a broad crackdown on about 150,000 accounts linked to the conspiracy in July.

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But those steps have had little effect. On Twitter, QAnon followers successfully hijacked a save the children hashtag after the purge and in Australia the Guardian noticed little if any impact on local QAnon groups after Facebook’s crackdown.

In fact, a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found QAnon’s following was growing considerably in Australia.

“We found that the US was consistently the largest QAnon content-producing country, followed by the UK, Canada and Australia,” the report stated.

Though most of QAnon’s lore is specifically catered to a US audience (QAnon’s followers believe the US president, Donald Trump, is secretly working to thwart the network of paedophiles and their “deep state” collaborators), its inherent adaptability means it’s capable of hoovering up pre-existing conspiracy theories into its swirling illogic.....

Coalition shields firebrand MP Craig Kelly from censure for spreading Covid misinformation

Read moreIn Australia, its adherents have had no trouble retrofitting the theory to suit our politics.....

Karen Brewer
Snapshot taken from a YouTube video
30 August 2020

On 19 May 2020 there was a hearing in the matter of Webster v Brewer (No 2) [2020] FCA 727.

There was no appearance at that hearing by counsel for 52 year-old Ms. Brewer.

The Court accepted that Ms. Brewer had been properly notified of the hearing date, court details and had received the statement of claim & revised statement of claim.

On 19 May the Court reaffirmed Orders of 8 May - the following is an excerpt from those Orders.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

PENAL NOTICE TO: 

KAREN BREWER IF YOU (BEING THE PERSON BOUND BY THIS ORDER): (A) REFUSE OR NEGLECT TO DO ANY ACT WITHIN THE TIME SPECIFIED IN THIS ORDER FOR THE DOING OF THE ACT; OR 
(B) DISOBEY THE ORDER BY DOING AN ACT WHICH THE ORDER REQUIRES YOU NOT TO DO, YOU WILL BE LIABLE TO IMPRISONMENT, SEQUESTRATION OF PROPERTY OR OTHER PUNISHMENT. 

ANY OTHER PERSON WHO KNOWS OF THIS ORDER AND DOES ANYTHING WHICH HELPS OR PERMITS YOU TO BREACH THE TERMS OF THIS ORDER MAY BE SIMILARLY PUNISHED. 

 IN THESE ORDERS: 

 a) the respondent’s Facebook account is accessible at the URL address ‘https://www.facebook.com/karen.spiers.336’. 
b) the “First Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 6.21am. 
c) the “First Video” is the video post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 2.01pm. 
d) the “Second Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 27 April 2020 at 5.14am. 
e) the “Second Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 30 April 2020 at 6.13pm. 
f) the “Third Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 5.42am. 
g) the “Third Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 6.00am. 
h) the “Fourth Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 7.44am.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

Upon the applicants giving the usual undertaking as to damages (see Practice Note GPN-UNDR), until further order, the respondent by herself or by her servants or agents, or howsoever, be restrained from publishing or causing to be published in any form, or maintaining online for downloading, or uploading so as to make available for publication online: 
a)the First Post; 
b) the First Video; 
c) the Second Post; 
d) the Second Video; 
e) the Third Post; 
f) the Third Video; 
g) the Fourth Video; and any other matter to the same purport or effect as any of the above matters to the extent that such other matters identify the applicants, whether expressly or by implication.