As my Mum would say ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times’. So let’s do it one more time: The only difference between old people and us is that they got there first.

It’s a message seemingly lost on our judges, our politicians, the bureaucrats and some nursing home owners.

Two issues in the past twenty-four hours have made me sad and angry. The first I mentioned near the end of yesterday’s program. The case of a 75-year-old great-grandmother, asleep in her bed when attacked by a drunken intruder.

Barbara Durea was bashed unconscious and left to die by 19-year-old Ashley Wayne Brooks who wanted to disable her so she couldn’t identify him.

Even though Brooks was an adult Judge David Parsons thought he was too young and too skinny to be sent to an adult jail.  He told the Aboriginal teenager “I think you’re worth a chance’ and sentenced him to two years in a  youth justice centre. It’s a sick joke.

His victim, who spent 12 days in an induced coma, has given up her flat and now lives in a nursing home, still in pain, and jumping out of her skin when somebody comes up behind her.

The other concerns a government report on an issue we covered at length on this program last year. The outbreak of gastroenteritis at Broughton Hall last year that killed five elderly residents and put 20 others in hospital. And the cover-up day after day as bureaucrats and politicians scrambled for cover.

It now seems that a report filed by the Aged Care Commissioner Rhonda Parker last May sat in Canberra for nine months. The responsibility of then Ageing Minister, Christopher Pyne. Remember him? The one who said he’d rather be in Foreign Affairs?

The report is savage and damning. Departmental staff did eventually visit Broughton Hall tom investigate the gastro outbreak. But they checked only the hospital’s paperwork and not even a glance at the residents.

It gets worse. According to Commissioner Parker one resident, Merson Dunstan, cried out for help during a department visit to the home but his calls were not heard because the staff never ventured outside the office. Too immersed in paperwork and government forms!

The worst thing is  this is not an isolated nursing home horror story.

It doesn’t have to be that way. My 91-year-old  father is in a Government-subsidised nursing home in New Zealand. He has his own room, recreational rooms, 24-hour a day care, wonderful staff, good food,

and excursions. His twilight years are being made as comfortable and as happy as possible.  That’s what I’d want. Wouldn’t you?

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008