Page 3615 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 September 2019
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experience they do not seem to have a particularly good understanding of what a power of attorney is and under what circumstances it can be brought into operation.
I urge the minister to look at education, which I understand could be done in the ACT before the rest of Australia worked out the need for it. On that note, Victoria has an online enduring power of attorney form which has an awful lot more information than some people receive in the ACT when they fill in a power of attorney.
The education focus must not rely on the current frontline domestic and family violence training. I understand that there are some current challenges in the rolling out of that training and that it is only touching the tip of the iceberg in relation to elder abuse and truly understanding the issues of how to respond when somebody tells you what is happening to them. We need much better education for the potential attorneys, the person planning to enter into an enduring power of attorney and their advisers, be that the legal profession, JPs, or whoever.
Another theme that came through over and over again is that of isolation and loneliness. People perpetrating elder abuse tend to be the people older people have social contact with. The fear and reality of being left alone and isolated plays a significant role in how older people respond to elder abuse, be it financial or otherwise.
I constantly hear from people about situations where the older person knew that what was happening to them was not right but they did not wish to do anything about it because they valued the relationship more. Often those relationships are with their family—their adult children—and you can understand why they may not wish to alienate their only supports, especially in later years.
We also hear about the issue where it is the other way around where an older parent, often now only the mother, has been the carer for many years of an adult child—it seems to be normally the son—with a disability. They have been able to do that in their younger years but with declining health their child’s issues are more than they can really deal with. That is elder abuse, but they put up with it because they believe that there is no alternative for their child. This is really sad stuff.
The other sad stuff about this was talked about at great length by Ms Lawder and Mr Parton earlier today that is, issues with our transport system. Our public transport system is such that some people are becoming socially isolated because it is not possible for them to get out of their homes.
While I appreciate that the primary aim of our bus system is to get lots of people from one place to another—that is good and that is what it should be—it also needs to ensure that everyone in Canberra is able to leave their homes in a reasonable fashion and is not stuck at home with no possibility of contact with other people. That results in the one or two people they do have contact with being incredibly powerful, and that can lead to abuse. In other jurisdictions a carer cannot become an attorney simply because of that problem. These are some of the saddest cases where the very limited social support older people have is abused and they basically have nowhere to go.
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