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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-05-10 Daily Xml
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Oakden Mental Health Facility

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:47): My question is to the Premier. Following the Chief Psychiatrist's finding that staff of the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network have harboured, and I quote, 'deeply held concerns about the Oakden facility for many years', who is responsible for those concerns being ignored?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:47): I don't think I really need to go very much farther than to draw your attention to the previous remarks that I have made, but it is probably also worth noting that the Chief Psychiatrist himself notes in the report that there is a disturbing culture of nondisclosure that occurred within this facility.

An honourable member: I wonder where he gets that from?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: That is a good question, because it is certainly not the policy of this government. Our policy has been to shine a light on those issues which are disturbing failures, whether they be in the child protection system or, sadly, in this area. It is, of course, deeply distressing when there is any section of the service that we provide by the state government that fails our citizens. It is probably even more profoundly so when those people are themselves some of our most vulnerable and needing our greatest care.

For me, it is a source of enormous distress to think that some of these older people here were grappling, probably in and out of lucidity, with their mental health care issues, being incredibly frightened when people were dealing with them roughly or in an abusive way. For me, that is a shattering idea, and I know that that is at the heart of the concern of these family members. These are family members who often feel incredibly guilty about the fact that their loved ones can't be at home or in an aged-care facility.

It is always a hard thing to put a loved one in an aged-care facility. I have been through this myself. You worry about it every day. The only thing that is worse is if you think you have made a decision where they have actually been exposed to additional risk, or something bad has happened to them. It is true that some of the behaviours of a number of these patients are extreme, but that is no justification for them to be treated with anything less than absolute respect and dignity, and it is shameful that they weren't—

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I call the member for Hartley to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —and we repeat our apology to those patients and to their family members. Our responsibility now, knowing about this, is to act assertively to fix it.

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