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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3001 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

We have made a number of recommendations, and for me this is one of the more important areas of the report. We have passed a number of recommendations that you will see on page 35 to deal with the power of attorney. The rules of power of attorney need to be tightened. There need to be some further protections for the person handing over the power. The legal fraternity must understand the problems and give sound advice. I will not read all those recommendations, but I certainly draw them to your attention and ask that the next government pay full attention to them.

While there is a measure of elder abuse that we cannot quite identify, it is important that we take steps to let people know about it, especially those who work in institutions or who work in community bodies around the place, such as community nurses and respite care people who go into homes. It is important to undertake a stronger campaign to inform them about elder abuse so that they might be in the position where they see it to do some reporting about it.

While we want more information in the community, we have indicated that we are not supporting mandatory reporting. We followed the lead from other states and we will not go down the path at this stage of requiring mandatory reporting, but we do need education and information campaigns to see that people in the community are well aware of the problem and that they can act to protect the rights of the elders in our community.

One of the matters we considered was an approach from a retirement village about the charges that were being imposed upon them. We were fairly cautious about this because if any legal action arises, and there was some suggestion that it might, we did not think it was proper for us to be making findings of fact.

From my point of view at least, if not of the committee, both parties at that village entered into arrangements with great optimism, perhaps unfounded optimism. The management certainly believed it could deliver a fine product-it is a wonderful place physically-and that they could keep costs down to a minimum, and perhaps they were too optimistic. The residents who moved in, who did so because the fees were very low compared to any other village in the ACT, also did so with that level of optimism. It seems that as things moved on that optimism could not be maintained and inevitably the financing of the village dictated that there had to be some increases.

Because there has been very limited communication, because there has not been effective communication between the management and the residents of the village, matters have degenerated. The situation does need to be resolved. I would look for some sort of committee, a management and resident committee at the village, to try to work through these problems, which I think came from an undue level of optimism on both sides at the outset.

Mr Speaker, I emphasise again that this last report of the committee is an important report, and I look forward to being able to be some part of the action that may flow from it in the future.

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