Senator FORSHAW (3:21 PM) —The Minister for Ageing, Senator Santoro, arrived late for question time today, and he may as well not have turned up at all, given his failure on at least three occasions to answer serious questions put to him by the opposition. Senator Santoro attempted to fob off the outrageous, terrible things that have been reported in recent times that have occurred in at least one nursing home in Victoria, where allegations of rape have been made. He said he is going to have a summit, he is going to have an inquiry, he is going to have a review and he is going to have a meeting of the state ministers.

Senator Santoro has recently been appointed as the minister, and it has become very obvious, through the estimates hearings two weeks ago and his performance here in question time, that he either fails to read his briefs or he is completely ignorant and fails to understand them. I suspect it might be both. It is an outrage that the minister dealing with serious issues such as this can stand in this parliament and say we should depoliticise this issue. In other words, the opposition, according to Senator Santoro, should not ask him questions regarding his responsibility as Minister for Ageing. He wants to get off scot-free.

Let us have a look at the situation to date. The Howard government have been in power for 10 years. They are making a big thing about celebrating this anniversary. In 1996 the newly elected Howard government introduced the new aged care legislation. I remember it well because I was in charge of it from the opposition benches when the debate took place in the Senate. It was a long, drawn out debate and the legislation was very detailed. The new coalition government at the time promised a new world for aged care.

Senator Patterson, who has once again made a contribution on this issue, as she has been doing for many years, talked about the supposed terrible, disgraceful years under the previous Labor government. The coalition government said they were going to change and improve things. Today in this debate Senator Patterson could not address the issues that are occurring now under this supposed new beaut system. All Senator Patterson did was once again go back to those old arguments that it was pretty bad back in the eighties, as if somehow that excuses their failure to resolve issues and ensure that standards are kept and our aged people in this country are not mistreated in nursing homes.

It is happening today and it has been happening with regularity since this government came to power. Senator Humphries a moment ago could not think of one example to point to from when we were in government, but he said: ‘There must have been some. We just assume that it happened.’ The fact is that under this government some of the most outrageous situations have occurred, and we have raised them in this parliament time and time again. We all recall the outrageous conduct in a nursing home where patients were given kerosene baths. Senator Brown in her excellent contribution told of a litany of problems that have occurred under this government. We have had situations under this supposedly great accreditation scheme where homes have been given accreditation and passed all tests one day and then three months later failed half the tests after a particular serious incident has occurred.

We now have this terrible situation where a person has been charged with the alleged rape of elderly patients in the nursing home. That is happening now under this government. You have to accept responsibility for it. You cannot walk away from it and you cannot try and point to what you think may have happened 15 years ago as some sort of an excuse. You have to start acting on this serious issue. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.