Aged care - it’s down to Scotty from Marketing’s government

[pim]

It’s part of the shit sandwich Scotty from Marketing must eat if he’s to acknowledge how foul it tastes and that he has to start sacking the kitchen staff that prepares these shit sandwiches and appoint better quality staff ..

Grattan on Friday: Morrison government needs to improve, rather than defend, its poor COVID aged care performance

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra August 13, 2020 theconversation.com/amp/grattan-on-friday-morrison-government-needs-to-improve-rather-than-defend-its-poor-covid-aged-care-performance-144447



The state of aged care preparation in the era of COVID is, it seems, in the eye of the beholder. Vastly different claims emerged this week, when the royal commission examining the sector turned its attention to the handling of the pandemic. According to senior counsel assisting the commission, Peter Rozen, QC, federal authorities had no COVID plan specifically for aged care, always potentially a major risk area. And, Rozen noted, compared with many countries, residents of facilities form a very high proportion of Australia’s deaths. The government disputes the lack-of-plan allegation and has a different take on the statistics.

Brendan Murphy, secretary of the health department and until recently Australia’s chief medical officer, appearing before the commission, insisted there had been proper planning, and said the death proportion reflected not a failure in aged care but the low number of fatalities in the general community. If you were taking a bet on who most people would believe, Rozen would be short odds. Morrison knows the government is highly vulnerable on the issue. Aged care is a federal responsibility. It affects millions of Australians, counting those with relatives in homes. People’s anger buttons are easily triggered when things go wrong.

Some around the government might like to discount Rozen’s attack as being what counsels-assisting do at royal commissions. But his claims were backed by witnesses, from highly-regarded geriatrician Joseph Ibrahim, of Monash University, to union officials with members on the front line. They also resonated after the numerous first hand accounts in the media from families as the virus has ripped through well over a hundred facilities in Victoria. Currently, there are more than 1000 cases among residents and over 1000 among staff, linked to these homes.

Politicians have been congratulated during COVID for listening to experts, but according to Ibrahim there was not enough aged care expertise applied in the preparations to firewall the sector. It’s hard if not impossible, anyway, to build adequate safeguards when the structure itself is so compromised, due to bad decisions and neglect over many years. A sector operating with low paid, often short term, casuals who pick up work across facilities and often have inadequate English (complicating even basic training) was always inviting disaster. Health minister Greg Hunt declared recently, after Dan Andrews said he wouldn’t want his mother to be in some of these places: “The idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think, is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I won’t hear a word against them.” This misses the point. No one doubts the commitment the majority of the carers have to their work. But the nature of the workforce brings dangers for residents.

Many facilities run on narrow financial margins. The rules allow them to keep their staffing to a minimum, in terms of numbers and skill. Nor has regulatory oversight been adequate. Often it is families and the media that have exposed neglect and abuses. Morrison announced the royal commission in September 2018 a day before an ABC Four Corners investigation was to air. The for-profit system emphasises the idea of facilities being “home-like”, which sounds great but can mean inadequate specialised care and challenges for inflection control. The word “tragic” is thrown around too much by politicians and media. But what’s happened in aged care during COVID has indeed been a tragedy.

It’s just possible if the pandemic had come two years later, after next year’s final report of the royal commission had forced some reform, that fewer lives would have been lost. But even with the system as it is, the evidence indicates better planning could have saved lives. That’s certainly Ibrahim’s view. In his precis of evidence, he argued “hundreds of residents will die prematurely because people failed to act. We had enough knowledge to do better. We failed because when residents are treated as second class citizens there is an absence of accountability and consequences for those responsible for aged care in Australia,” he said. There was “failure to provide the same health response to residential aged care that was delivered to the rest of Australia.”

The government has been playing catchup on aged care all through the pandemic. It had to put substantial money in to help with staffing; it was slow to acknowledge the importance of masks; it set up a co-ordinated response in Victoria belatedly; national cabinet only a week ago stepped up preparations in other parts of the country. Morrison is now confronted at two levels: there must be root and branch reform after the royal commission, and his government is under immediate pressure over this week’s indictment. The government’s tactic of inserting Murphy into the commission’s witness list was a miscalculation. It seemed to assume the commission would defer to Murphy when he sought to make a statement to reject Rozen’s claims. But he was refused permission to commence with the statement (which he delivered at the end of the session) and all his appearance did was highlight the government’s sensitivity.

When he summed up the COVID hearings on Thursday, Rozen did not resile from his initial criticisms. He concluded the problems in aged care had been foreseeable; “not all that could be done was done”; and the challenge remained. Picking up a recommendation from Ibrahim, Rozen urged an “age-care specific national co-ordinating body to advise government”. It would bring together expertise in aged care, infection control and emergency preparedness. With such a body, “a national aged care plan for COVID could still be put in place,” Rozen said. Although the advisory body is not a formal recommendation, commissioner Tony Pagone endorsed it among “practical things that perhaps should not wait. The virus doesn’t wait and nor should the measures that need to be implemented to deal with the virus wait either”, Pagone said.

The government, which has previously signalled more assistance for aged care in the budget, should stop insisting it has done everything well and act immediately on this and some of the other suggestions made in the COVID hearings. Morrison said this week in a Facebook message, “I want to assure that where there are shortcomings in these areas they’ll be acknowledged. And the lessons will be learned.” The government likes to talk about wanting a reform agenda, but this should not be just an economic one. Aged care must be near the top of any serious “reform” to-do list, and vested interests should not be allowed to limit necessary changes. In his end-of-year ministerial reshuffle, prompted by Mathias Cormann deciding to quit parliament, Morrison should elevate the aged care portfolio from the outer ministry to cabinet. Having the post in cabinet would send a positive signal but, more importantly, it would encourage a wider range of ministerial eyes on an issue that’s been mishandled for as long as anyone can remember. Veterans’ affairs is in cabinet, and most families would think aged care is just as worthy of a place.

[Deleted]

Not sure when it started but the underfunding of aged care and the ideology it must be run as a profit run business happened under Labor that was started by Howards trying to emulate the US system.

Poorly paid workers used like expendable pawns.

[Stellar]

Scotty from Marketing, Scotty from Marketing .... blah blah blah ... on and on and on .... ad infinitum.  

So how about some threads on Dandemic Andrews?   Because if anyone has presided over the greatest stuff up regarding this pandemic, it's him!  

Yet no one seems to want to go there ... now I wonder why!  

[Deleted]

Buck stops with Andrews and the failure in hotel quarantine, and the people dying in aged care... the buck stops with ScoMo.

[pim]

We will only survive COVID-19 with an audacious rewriting of the economy


Unless we want 10,000 businesses disappearing overnight, we'll need to rethink how the Australian economy works in the age of COVID-19.

GUY RUNDLE AUG 14, 2020 Crikey




In my local cafe, the smile of the owner is gradually disappearing week by week as he dispenses coffee from behind a piquant little mask. That must have seemed cute a few weeks ago. Now, there is a worry in his eyes that was not there before. When the first lockdown occurred, he negotiated a deal with the district landlords of his shop for a rent holiday that went for three months. Rent was reintroduced and then suspended again. He has reduced his staff to a single other person in order to give his retinue of staff at least some regular work.
But it’s all starting to come apart. The Noosa absentee landlords are now wondering if he is ever going to be able to return to the levels of commerce that he has had hitherto — they’re wondering if he will simply put up the closed sign on the shop, head out the back door and keep going. They’re wondering if they should get what renders they still can from whatever reserves he has left, while there’s some steel to get it from.

This would appear to be repeating itself across Melbourne at the moment, and should lockdowns return to other states and to other countries, the same thing will start to happen there. The lack of a second lockdown in other places has allowed them the benefit — or perhaps the illusion — that they could escape a reckoning through questions about the sort of economy we have, and how well suited it is to any sort of minor interruption. Everything that is happening now is telling us that this sort of highly complex economy is not set up for even the most minor disturbance, which is really what COVID-19 should actually be. The simple act of reopening will not be sufficient if a basic level of confidence is not there to inspire people to go out and spend in the manner they once did. It is clear how easily things come apart. The border disruptions between states are now taking their predictable toll on a national and international food supply, one of the things which federation was specifically designed to guard against.

The grotesque imbalance between the sort of money we spend on luxuries and the amount we spend on what should be necessities is becoming starker by the day. Yet, a vast amount of energy is being expended by the powers that be on keeping social relations exactly as they are, despite whatever rational changes COVID-19 might prompt. Thus there is now protest at the fact that private corporations are paying out dividends to shareholders, even though those companies have been recipients of JobKeeper. The difficulty here for those who would seek to preserve the social relations at all costs is that, beyond a certain point, you simply cannot engineer the confidence required to spend or to restore levels of spending and circulation in the private sector. And there is an absolute and total resistance to any idea that the state might step in — in a good, old-fashioned Keynesian manner — to restore, if not the levels of confidence, then the levels of spending which would fill the gap.

There is an extraordinary level of acceptance here, especially in Australia it would seem, of a whole series of shibboleths about the limited role of government in the economy. Fran Kelly on Radio National breakfast this week interviewed Matt Comyn, CEO of Commonwealth Bank, in the manner in which one might interview an oncologist about cancer — as someone who can give an entirely disinterested and analytical view of the problem at hand, not one in which interests were at play. Did Comyn think there was any problem with the fact that dividends were being paid out, even while employees were getting JobKeeper money which would eventually be paid by the taxpayer? No, surprisingly, Comyn did not think that. Was the level of extra savings at $25 billion such that one might consider negative interest rates as a way of stimulating spending? Comyn thought negative interest rates were not such a great idea. They’ve been tried elsewhere, and hadn’t really been a success. This is entirely spurious. But Kelly never followed up with the other question, which was whether the head of a bank was objecting to negative interest rates because they might impose an incentive to push money out the door into everyday investment. The obvious point is that the Commonwealth Bank has no interest whatsoever in whether the economy functions well or poorly at the grassroots level. Its only interest now is in the higher-flown world of finance, which can apparently tick on endlessly as the economy at street level gets poorer and poorer.

Meanwhile, no one has emerged in mainstream politics with the basic guts or audacity to say that the interruption granted by COVID-19 is an extraordinary opportunity to do some reconstruction of an economy that has become a sort of booby trap. I don’t want my local cafe to go under. But it might be said that COVID-19 has simply exposed the degree to which we have a policy of having no policy on where spending goes. The plight, in fact, is that the economy we have now is the result of a system of steadily lowered taxes, higher discretionary spending, high levels of family and public debt, all inevitably directed to the point of consumption in which ever-greater sectors of production have become import sectors — the very reverse of what we have been trying to do with the country for 50 years. The neoliberal right will, of course, say that this is just a matter of freedom and personal choices. But the current distortions in the economy to deliver the things that we need effectively demonstrate that the very opposite is the case. Neoliberalism is simply a different system of regulation which prioritises certain forms of expenditure and limits the possibility of others, and therefore systematically removes the option to choose other things which may be of greater importance and utility.

We can not all individually choose to have a better aged care system by an act of a million individual choices; such a thing has to be made as a collective choice.

A neoliberal regime also has a specific role with regard to time, and what one can only call human frailty. Though we know we should save and direct resources towards the things that sustain life — such as proper aged care — the rationality of a system of so-called free choices and individual wants will always win as we respond to the immediate stimuli. We can see this happening in the great superannuation withdrawal that has occurred. The contradictions of this crisis can be seen nowhere more than in aged care. Simultaneous privatisation and deregulation of aged care means one important thing: that the efficacy of extra expenditure is removed. You don’t really know whether the gold-plated aged care home you have consigned your relative to is really delivering, or if it has dished out the same sort of shoddy care that would be had in a much cheaper home. Only the very richest people can now afford to have the home-based, 24-hour care necessary in the situation of dementia or other conditions. Yet politicians who won’t be able to afford that have still put in place a system which people contemplate with horror and fear. Dan Andrews saying he wouldn’t want his mother in a place like this illustrates this as clearly as possible. Where else does he think she is going to end up if she has dementia or other conditions which require constant nursing?

This is simply a retread of the fantasy that everybody has: that they will never put their parents or aged relatives in a home. But sooner or later everybody does, because as we live longer there are increasingly less options for the continued care of a person. This illustrates not only the irrationality of the system, but its now autonomous character. The fact is, we have created the very opposite of the sort of economy we should have engineered out of prosperity. And the coming of COVID-19 has made that starkly visible.

We have steered in exactly the opposite direction that the European social democracies did in the post-World War II years, as high-level economic growth occurred. They used higher personal and luxury taxes in order to steer money back into collective control, so it could be redirected towards social investment and the growth of a social plan. We did what they sought to avoid, which was to allow levels of prosperity to generate personal spending that deprived society of the capacity for greater collective social investment. Would it be possible that the occurrence of something like the COVID-19 pandemic would allow for an alternative proposal as to how we should organise the economy? Yes, it would. This is actually an extraordinary opportunity to reverse that foolish decision to rely on individual consumption and redirect money into social investment, aimed at soaking up the excess savings that some people are accumulating even as others go without a substantial wage. Such a bond system would rely on the same principles that the war bonds did: first and foremost, of course, to pay for the extra production required to run a total war/social machine. But it was done entirely by borrowing from the public rather than from international money. That decisively ended the Great Depression by persuading people to spend money on war bonds for patriotic reasons, as well as for their own future security. The governments of the West not only managed to draw back some of the wages that they would pay out through total world production, they also managed to reduce the levels of spending on gambling, alcohol and other diversions, and to prevent the inflation of costs in such diversions which would have been a response to the scarcity of their supply in a war environment.

They did so by making war bonds something other than a simple personal investment. War bonds were an investment in collective security, and in a world mission. They were an expression of mutual support. COVID-19 bonds could be issued to do the same thing as fixed-rate, high-yield bonds separate from the flows of the money market. And with the stated purpose of redirecting the money towards the things that we now see are essential — such as a better aged care system and a renewed focus on research development, so that we could genuinely be in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine and not be left begging on the global market. The money from COVID-19 bonds could be used for rapid re-training schemes for many people who will be nearly unemployed, a lot of them from the hospitality industry. Such a system would remove the blackmail of the consumer markets for the future of the wider economy. The money that goes to COVID-19 bonds from savings of those who still have full employment and are accumulating money — money they cannot or do not wish to spend — is redistributed in a manner that increases fairness. That won’t happen in a political scene that has decisively renounced any sort of dangerous or original strategy which would allow them to present a genuine alternative to the situation we find ourselves in. So I don’t want my local cafe to go out of business. But if cafes are to go out of business, if there is to be a shift in the basis of the economy, then would it not be better for that shift to be managed consciously, in pursuit of a better society which is close to within our grasp? The alternative to such an audacious scheme — which is hardly audacious in the grand scheme of political initiatives — is that one morning in late spring of this year, or all at once, 10,000 businesses will suddenly, finally, give up the ghost, hand back the keys, shut the shop and turn the closed sign for the last time

Guy Rundle
CORRESPONDENT-AT-LARGE
Guy Rundle is correspondent-at-large for Crikey. He's a former editor of Arena Magazine and contributes to a variety of publications in Australia and the United Kingdom

[caskur]

Here is a message from my 73 year old Aunty, " When your time is up, it's up."

Here is a message from me, it has nothing to do with Dumb Bums, Trump, ScoMo, or Andrews.

Previous moves on work place standards have been deteriorating for 2 decades. Importing cheap labour has come back to bite everyone in the arse. And yes, I am referring to aged care staff.

The only thing that hasn't deteriorated is politicians salaries.

[caskur]

in wa, you have to sell 5000 cups of coffee a week just to pay rent.

there is plenty of cash under the counter transactions going on in small business.

i love how everybody in the eastern states whinge continually about money.

[Deleted]

The corporate world gets tax cuts, the wealthy get trust accounts and franking credits and old people get no care...this is how neoliberalism works.

[Stellar]

Aug 15, 2020 4:35:19 GMT 10 caskur said:

in wa, you have to sell 5000 cups of coffee a week just to pay rent.

there is plenty of cash under the counter transactions going on in small business.

i love how everybody in the eastern states whinge continually about money.

I've noticed that whilst the big supermarkets and chain stores ask you to pay by card during the pandemic, the smaller shops want cash.  Cash is king to them because otherwise your money goes straight into their bank account and the bank takes the lot.  So cash in the till means they can go shopping for groceries and pay for what they need at a time when there is little coming in but overheads still remain high.  So I've been throwing a lot of cash around during this pandemic and small businesses love you for it.  

I don't know why you make a blanket statement about the eastern states and whinging about money though.  I have no reason to whinge - I'm happy with my super and my sister is happy with jobkeeper and her husband works from home.  I haven't heard anyone whinging about money.  I think jobkeeper is a rort - for instance my sister only worked one or two days a week but she is being paid $1500 a fortnight!  

[Stellar]

Aug 15, 2020 4:27:20 GMT 10 caskur said:

Here is a message from my 73 year old Aunty, " When your time is up, it's up."

Here is a message from me, it has nothing to do with Dumb Bums, Trump, ScoMo, or Andrews.

Previous moves on work place standards have been deteriorating for 2 decades. Importing cheap labour has come back to bite everyone in the arse. And yes, I am referring to aged care staff.

The only thing that hasn't deteriorated is politicians salaries.

Your aunty is right!  We shouldn't be keeping oldies alive on multiple drugs.  Nature should be allowed to take its course when one gets to their 80s and 90s.  Quality of life should be the main consideration.  Not keeping people alive artificially and often in pain and with no mobility.  Would you really like that sort of ending?  Why not legalise euthanasia if people want to be able to make that decision for themselves?  People know when it's their time - let them be in control.  

I remember several residents who were receiving palliative care - this was not in a hospice!  Their beds were wheeled down to the main lounge and plonked outside the RN/Manager's office where she could keep an eye on them during her shift.  However all the other residents with dementia milled around, poking at these poor individuals, pulling their sheets down, interfering with them and their catheters.  And the noise, the constant movement, the overhead fluorescent lighting!  I mean, it was almost like these poor dying residents were on show - visitors to the facility had to walk through all these beds to get to the office.  There was no privacy.  There was no consideration for their peace and dignity.  And the worst of all - being "looked after" by a bunch of inexperienced immigrants with poor English and who had no wish to even be there.  But aged care is the only industry that provides work without any requirements such as nursing experience or indeed vocational suitability.  

[pim]

Financially I’m having a good pandemic on my retirement income. Jobseeker/Jobkeeper aren’t issues for me personally because I’m free of the imperative of keeping a job or looking for one. I’m not gloating because I’m aware that I’m fortunate to belong to a much more privileged demographic. You don’t have to look far to encounter people in much less secure circumstances: nieces, nephews ... I certainly don’t “whinge” and nor do I have any reason to whinge. Op shops like Vinnies and the Salvos are doing a roaring trade.

[caskur]

Aug 15, 2020 11:56:38 GMT 10 Stellar said:

Aug 15, 2020 4:35:19 GMT 10 caskur said:

in wa, you have to sell 5000 cups of coffee a week just to pay rent.

there is plenty of cash under the counter transactions going on in small business.

i love how everybody in the eastern states whinge continually about money.

I don't know why you make a blanket statement about the eastern states and whinging about money though.  I have no reason to whinge - I'm happy with my super and my sister is happy with jobkeeper and her husband works from home.  I haven't heard anyone whinging about money.  I think jobkeeper is a rort - for instance my sister only worked one or two days a week but she is being paid $1500 a fortnight!  

I watch mainly ABC 24 because these days ads drive me berserk and they are the only ad free channel. All I ever hear from the news is how hard up the ES is and scream every bloody minute how tough people are doing it in the ES.

WA have fires, WA lose property, animals die, WA have unemployed, yadda yadda, but do you on your side ever hear WA whinging? We get on with it and do what has to done.

I'm getting sick of it. I'm so sick of the whinging, I've turned it all off.

Australia allowed the problems to come here like Australia allow arsonists to light fires.

Subjects like PIM puts up there in post #1 is just noise. The general population don't care!~

[caskur]

Oh and WA has already passed voluntary euthanasia laws...

www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/voluntary-euthanasia-becomes-law-in-wa-in-emotional-scenes/11784828

[pim]

The "general population" (a scientifically selected representative sample of one - you) believes that people over 70 should offer themselves as sacrificial victims to the virus. Kids don't love their Nana & Pop? Right. Got it. What do I get? That you're an extremist, Toots!

[caskur]

Aug 15, 2020 17:20:42 GMT 10 pim said:

The "general population" (a scientifically selected representative sample of one - you) believes that people over 70 should offer themselves as sacrificial victims to the virus. Kids don't love their Nana & Pop? Right. Got it. What do I get? That you're an extremist, Toots!

I never said that... Stellar did.

I have 4 Aunties uncles, (71, 72, 80 x 2 twins) a step father(74) and a mother-in-law (88) and want none of them dead. None are in a home though, I should make that point.

My grandparents were the greatest people on the planet.

Careful what think you read and who you read it from.

[pim]

Morrison can’t bluff his way out of the aged care crisis

Mungo MacCallum, 18 August 2020 johnmenadue.com/morrison-cant-bluff-his-way-out-of-the-aged-care-crisis/

I will turn 80 next year, which means that the issue of aged care is rapidly assuming more than academic significance.

I still hope and expect my last years peacefully at home, but given my declining health I have to accept that it may not be possible – I will have to go into some sort of home. And the prospect leaves me with gloom and apprehension.

This is almost certainly unfair – almost all aged care facilities are doing their best and most are managed and managing very well. The ABC’s wonderful series about bringing four-year-olds into one of them for regular visits shows that with ingenuity and diligence an aged care home can be a place of joy and hope.

Some of my older female friends have taken the plunge and after a usually brief period of assimilation have found the transition both comfortable and beneficial. I can’t say the same for my older male friends, because they are almost all dead. That is another article altogether.

But there is more than enough anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that some are clearly dysfunctional, with neglect not uncommon and even willful murder occasionally revealed.

And sometimes not revealed – covered up so that the homes can operate to the satisfaction of their owners, often rich entrepreneurs who have built financial empires over the graves of their victims.

So it is not surprising that they are regarded as places of last resorttwilight homes, God’s waiting rooms where the frail and helpless are left to die. Or that there is community outrage at the lack of adequate supervision from wither the industry or the government.

This was the case long before Coronavirus inveigled its way in, but the rate of deaths in the last months has forced matters to something of a tipping point. There is a royal commission underway with the likelihood of reform, although given the complexities of the area it may take quite a while to implement.

And Australian politics being what it is, the blame game is well underway: is this ongoing disaster the fault of the states, and particularly Victoria, the socialist dictatorship of Daniel Andrews who is axiomatically responsible for everything, or does the buck stop with the commonwealth, who, as Scott Morrison once admitted with unwonted candour, the people who can dole out the money?

Well, as is almost always the case where disputes over federalism erupt, a bit of both. Andrews is stuck with the day to day running of the institutions, which has seldom been optimal and at times catastrophic. But he can pay for whatever Morrison is willing to fund beyond the fees (frequent exorbitant) levied on the hapless residents. and obviously it just isn’t enough.

It wasn’t before COVID-19 emerged, and it certainly isn’t now. And it is more than disingenuous for the feds to claim that they had a plan ready in the event of a pandemic and that it was in the process of working. There wasn’t and it isn’t,

Sadly, Brendan Murphy, the newly minted head of the health department, has been drawn into the deception. Having been promoted, presumably on the strength of his credibility in his role as the government’s chief health officer, he is now pushing spin rather than substance.

His extraordinary intervention in the commission, demanding the right to defend Morrison’s plan, has been more than embarrassing. His line was that the plan must be working because the death rate in aged care homes in Australia compared with the rest of the population was less than that in England.

And it may be, but it is still more than the rate anywhere else – Australia ranks among the worst in the developed world, depending on how you do the numbers. To claim that as some sort of triumph is as mendacious as anything coming out of Morrison’s office. Even The Australian wasn’t buying it.

But what The Australian was buying, indeed vigorously promoting, was the distraction: the reason for the stuff up in hotel quarantine restrictions was not only entirely Andrews fault, which goes without saying, but could have been avoided: Andrews knocked back an offer from defence personnel who were willing, and probably eager to take over.

Instead, he installed private contractors who bonked their way through the buildings while the stir-crazed detainees surged out to spread the virus across Melbourne, across Victoria, across the nation. Criminal negligence, if not deliberate sabotage. The man must resign, or better, suffer ritual disembowelment.

According to this theory, the gallant. diggers were ready with every assistance, and Andrews had churlishly refused them: no ifs, no buts. And ScoMo’s Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds, had a timeline to prove it.

Except that she didn’t. What the timeline, in fact, shows that there was certainly an understanding between commonwealth and state officials that assistance would be forthcoming if and when it was required and that Emergency Management Victoria commissioner Andrew Crisp was well and truly in the loop, discussing details of how it could be implemented with the officers of the ADF.

Initially, that was to be limited to transport, specifically collecting those bound for isolation from the airport to their hotels but extending that to using defence personnel as security once they got there was also on the table. But Crisp is firm that those negotiations did not involve Andrews or his office and that neither the premier nor any of his ministers actually made a request.

This can be dismissed as plausible deniability – or even somewhat implausible deniability. And in hindsight, the decision was unwise, although Western Australia pursued the same strategy without unleashing the horrors of the garden state’s second wave. But there is no smoking gun: as is so often the case, we are looking at a stuff-up rather than a conspiracy.

And the same can probably be said about Morrison’s handling of the aged care crisis, which makes his stubborn insistence that his government really did have a plan to prepare for it all the more puzzling. He says he is sorry if his plan did not meet community expectations. But if there was a plan at all, it has self-evidently failed, and he would do better to apologise unreservedly than to continue to try and defend the indefensible.

To admit to an honest oversight makes better political sense than attempting to bluff his way out of it. And it would help to reassure those likely to become the reluctant clients of the homes, which is considerably more important.

[Deleted]

Neoliberal age care has been managed to an extent that people are merely a commodity..so business can cash in on.

[caskur]

The Eskimos just put them on boats and pushed them off in the frost or banged them over their heads.

I have no idea what goes on in the ES but our oldies are treated like royalty in the main.

It costs a lot of money to live in our aged care places. They bloody built one in my suburb and it doesn't even have a garden for the residents to sit in.

[Deleted]

And the Japanese sons would take their old parents to the top of a mountain in winter and leave them there...back in the day when 42 was considered old.

[Stellar]

Aboriginals would just go off into the bush and die when they could no longer keep up with the tribe.  

You see, the ancients had very practical ways to deal with old age.  

[pim]

Also deeply spiritual: circle of life and all that. In this cosmology death isn’t the end but a transition. It exists in Christianity too 1Cor15:55

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

[Stellar]

The wages of sin is death but our victory is everlasting life through Jesus Christ.  Not sure whether I'm gonna make it though.  

[pim]

Scotty from Marketing - managing the blame game, not the pandemic. Scotty knows what his priorities are!

Scott Morrison's persistent effort to sidestep accountability for aged care is utterly transparent

Katharine Murphy, The Guardian, 19 August 2020 www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/19/scott-morrisons-persistent-effort-to-sidestep-accountability-for-aged-care-is-utterly-transparent


Is the prime minister focussed on managing the crisis at hand – or is he preoccupied with managing the blame game?

At the moment, if you ask the wrong question, Scott Morrison says you are being too binary. The ABC Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland found himself dispatched to binary corner on Wednesday morning after pursuing the prime minister on aged care. It’s worth sharing the exchange.

Question: Prime minister, Daniel Andrews the Victorian premier, says the buck stops with him when it comes to the hotel quarantine bungle. So does the buck stop with you as prime minister for the litany of aged care failures?

Morrison: Well, there are shared responsibilities for, well public health is a matter for the Victorian government, and the federal government regulates aged care …

Question: It’s a federal responsibility. It is fundamentally a federal responsibility.

Morrison: Well public health, we regulate aged care, but when there is a public health pandemic, then public health, which, whether it gets into aged care, shopping centres, schools or anywhere else, then they are things that are matters for Victoria. So I don’t think that it is as binary as you suggest.

Morrison was picked up on this observation later in the morning by the Sky News journalist Andrew Clennell.

Question: Is there an element here of you being happy to own the successes when it comes to dealing with the pandemic, but not the failures?

Morrison: I think that’s an unkind assessment, Andrew, that doesn’t bear out the facts.

Given facts have been invoked (hooray), let’s step those through. Morrison is correct to point out that aged care is connected to the public health system and vice versa. That’s a more than reasonable point. But the prime minister’s persistent effort to sidestep accountability is also utterly transparent. Before we get into responsibilities in the federation, just a basic point of logic. If it is fair to argue that Covid-19 got into aged care facilities because Daniel Andrews failed to stop community transmission, then it is also fair to argue about whether the commonwealth did enough to fortify residential aged care facilities against the incoming threat. If Australia’s health systems are connected, as the prime minister correctly suggests, then the performance of every tier of government is in focus during a pandemic.

Accountability isn’t selective. It doesn’t stop at the Victorian border. It goes all the way to Canberra. If Andrews is responsible, then so is Morrison. You can’t invent a world where someone else is responsible and you aren’t. Just for the record, the federal government funds and regulates aged care. This is a commonwealth responsibility. The Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus, released in February, draws the lines clearly, and it documents the desired interactions between the tiers of government during the pandemic. That document says the Australian government is responsible for residential aged care facilities “working with other healthcare providers to set standards to promote the safety and security of people in aged care and other institutional settings; and establishing and maintaining infection control guidelines, healthcare safety and quality standards”. So Canberra has primary responsibility. It sets the safety systems and ensures they are maintained – self-evidently a hands-on role. State and territory governments look after public health responses, which include “establishing systems to promote the safety and security of people in aged care”. The states also support the investigation of outbreaks.

These are the facts.

A couple of weeks ago, Morrison sent me to binary corner when I asked him whether we were still all in this crisis together – which is a mainstay of the government’s talking points – or whether “all in this together” had morphed during the second wave to blaming Andrews. My question was “binary” and “a little simplistic, with great respect”. On Wednesday, Morrison told reporters governments were “working together, not against each other – [that] is the way we manage these impacts”. But binary or not, this remains one of the critical questions about this phase of the pandemic: is the prime minister focussed, as he should be exclusively, on managing the crisis at hand – or is he preoccupied with managing the blame game?

[Deleted]

Won't be long and the will be euthanasia clinics where old, young and in between can go to end it all while watching  virtual reality holiday destinations while being converted into a useful and edible product..

[pim]

Ever see this movie?



It's on SBS On Demand

Delicatessen is a 1991 French post-apocalyptic black comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, starring Dominique Pinon and Marie-Laure Dougnac. It was released in North America as "presented by Terry Gilliam."

Plot

In a dilapidated apartment building in a post-apocalyptic France, food is in short supply and grain is used as currency. On the ground floor is a butcher's shop, run by the landlord, Clapet, who posts job opportunities in the Hard Times paper as means to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat to sell to his tenants.

Following the murder of the last worker, unemployed circus clown Louison applies for the vacant position. During his routine maintenance, he befriends Clapet's daughter, Julie, a relationship which slowly blossoms into romance. Louison proves to be a superb worker with a spectacular trick knife and the butcher is reluctant to kill him too quickly. During this time several of the tenants fall under Louison's boyish charms, worrying others who are more anxious for their own safety should they require meat. Aware of her father's motives, Julie descends into the sewers to make contact with the feared Troglodistes, a group of vegetarian rebels, whom she persuades to help rescue Louison.

During the apparent butchering of an old woman, the Troglodistes attack but are repelled, and Clapet, with the unsympathetic tenants, storms Louison's room in an attempt to murder him. Louison and Julie resist by flooding themselves, floor to ceiling, in an upper floor bathroom until Clapet opens the door releasing the flood and washing the attackers away. Clapet returns with Louison's knife and inadvertently kills himself. Louison and Julie play music together on the roof of the now peaceful apartment building.

If you like your humour black, this one's for you.