Oakden Mental Health Facility

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (15:30): 'Oakden' is a word forever tainted, becoming a totem of a broken government intent on putting self-preservation far beyond its services to South Australians. Perks before people, pay cheques before people, preservation before people, patronage before people—this is a government so rotten, so broken, so far removed from the reality being lived by everyday South Australians that it now only cares about keeping its ugly head above water and, like a drowning animal gasping for breath, it could not care less about those it is dragging down with it.

Its quest for survival and its arrogant determination that only it is worthy of survival betrays the fact that this government does not exist to make South Australia a better place. It exists as a tight clique of privileged elites who have spent 16 years in power and who are so reliant on the trappings of high office that they will continue sucking maniacally on the teat of state until they have drained South Australia of its worth, its hope and its future.

Oakden is an aged-care facility that was charged with looking after our most vulnerable. Its job was to care for people with dementia and to provide support and security—perhaps even to provide them with love—in the most difficult phase of their life, people facing a dark and difficult road to an inevitable death. If they were cancer sufferers in the terminal phase of life, would we lock them in a dank, prison-like facility, such as Oakden? Would we let them sit in their own filth? Would we abuse them or manhandle them? I assume the answer to this is no. We would try to make the last phase of their life as pleasant and as comfortable as possible.

Why does this government think that it is okay to kick those who are suffering from mental health issues in their later years on the trash heap, to spit on them, to leave them to rot and be abused in a facility so gross and so unlovely that it offends every tenet that our society should be proudly founded on. The Oakden scandal and all its horrible entrails should leave us asking a whole range of questions about the role of government. Government is surely there to catch people when they can no longer hold themselves up. Government is surely about providing those people with the love and support, care, compassion and dignity that they deserve when life takes the cruellest of turns.

Surely, in the most difficult of circumstances, you deserve a government to have your back, if no-one else, yet we know that the government did not have the backs of the victims of the Oakden scandal. We know that the facility was allowed to take on its own dark character, strangely set apart from SA Health in a parallel, unaccountable universe where abuse of its ageing patients was the norm and where turning a blind eye was seen as a solution to the problems at Oakden—a case of, 'What you don't know, you don't need to fix,' and another poisonous symptom of systemic arrogance.

The fallout from the Oakden report has been immense. In total, 25 staff have been reported to the national health regulator: 11 have been stood down, pending further investigations by SA Health, one has been sacked and one has resigned. Unbelievably, the figure of 25 comes from a workforce of only around 100. That is a quarter of the entire workforce stood down or being investigated.

The Oakden case has many horrible components: an elected government and a lazy bureaucracy, a bizarre meeting between the mental health commissioner and the mental health minister at Bunnings, a Premier who applauds the responsible minister's involvement rather than chastises it and, yesterday, the unique situation where a government chief executive revealed that she did not have confidence in her minister.

For me, the role played by Vickie Kaminski, the Chief Executive of SA Health is most interesting. She is one of the most unflappable bureaucrats I have ever seen. Brought to SA from Canada, and given the task of fixing the shambolic Transforming Health system, she is the sort of woman who would make you believe that the Black Death was simply a bad dose of man flu. This woman uses her accent—and I can say that—to carefully sedate any issue, disarming her opponents and inoculating herself against drama and crises.

Even Vickie Kaminski must wonder what she has got herself into, coming to deal with this hopeless state government, yet her eyes betray her. Behind her purple glasses are knowing eyes that give away how she really feels. In yesterday's press conference, you could clearly see that Ms Kaminski thought that she was surrounded by a pack of idiots. She wished she was back in Canada.

A society as much as a government should measure its strength, its decency and its modernity by the way it treats its most vulnerable. What has happened at Oakden is a disgrace, yet we see the Premier, the Treasurer, the Minister for Health and many other members, including today the member for Fisher and the member for Kaurna—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unfortunately, member for Bright, your time has expired.

Mr SPEIRS: —laughing, sniggering, sneering and smirking—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Bright!

Mr SPEIRS: —at the disgraceful behaviour—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Bright, your time has expired.

Mr SPEIRS: —that has happened at Oakden, which they laugh about, as if elder abuse—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Bright, sit down at once.

Mr SPEIRS: —is something to laugh about. This government is a disgrace.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down at once. That behaviour is not going to be tolerated in this chamber. No matter how hysterical you want to become, that is not what is allowed under standing orders. I am not sure what you did during question time. You have maintained an impeccable record during question time; however, I am appalled by what you have just done. You know the standing orders as well as any member of this house. I am not sure what to do with you. I will think about it as I call the member for Kaurna, but I just do not believe you did that. I am very disappointed.