The conjunction of the Parliament House sexual abuse furore and the damning report from the aged care royal commission raises many questions.
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The first is whether the community has the capacity to give these two issues the attention they deserve at the same time. Do we have the ability to walk and chew gum simultaneously or is it beyond us (the famous criticism of the limitations of American president Gerald Ford)?
The political and media cycles tend to move on inexorably. Our attention span is limited and too many issues on the agenda can serve to dilute the attention given to any one of them.
In this case we must concentrate on both issues. Not only are they extremely important in themselves, but there is common ground between them. Both reveal hitherto unimaginable human criminality and misbehaviour. Both workplaces are unsafe for many vulnerable people within them, staff in the case of Parliament House and residents in the case of aged care facilities. 18 per cent of aged care residents reportedly suffer physical and sexual abuse.
Both also reveal systemic weaknesses in government regulation and require legislative change. That responsibility falls to the government and Parliament, which are now themselves under a cloud. Is that irrelevant? Are the issues totally separate? That is the second suite of questions.
The link between the two is related to community trust in government, which is still falling. An Essential Poll has revealed that most Australians believe that in dealing with sexual abuse in Parliament House, the government has put its own interests before the interests of the alleged victims.
The remedies for our aged care system, including increased funding, training and regulation, look very different from the solutions to safety for women in Parliament House, which are not really about money but cultural change.
The remedies for aged care, in so far as they are about funding, are also in terms of priorities (both government and community). At the most basic level they are about that staple of politics: who gets what, when and how?
But what the remedies have in common is taking responsibility not just for recognising the problems but for committing to doing something about them. That responsibility lies not just with the government but also with the community. The latter means each of us individually and collectively. The measure of that is public opinion polls and ultimately voting preference at elections. There is a federal election due soon.
Recent government decisions have made it clear that community opinion does matter. The best example is the unacceptably tiny rise announced for the basic JobSeeker allowance. It will rise by less than $4 per day. The government was excoriated by multiple experts and interest group leaders for the inadequacy of this decision, but it has brushed off the criticisms.
It appears to have done so because it believes that the community does not support a bigger rise. The government calculates that the decision will not rebound on them because too many in the community believe that a higher rise would make the unemployed too comfortable and unwilling to seek work.
The third question then is: does the community care enough in these two instances? There is a possibility that the community does not care enough about what goes on in Parliament House, even sexual abuse, dismissing it as too distant from their own concerns and interests.
The more that the issue of safety for women in Parliament House can be addressed as a community-wide issue connected to the culture of all workplaces, not just about privileged staffers and MPs, the greater the chance of real solutions being implemented.
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Surely, though, the community cares enough about aged care? Not only is the community linked to aged care through the personal experiences of relatives and friends, but we are all heading inexorably in that direction as we get older. There but for the grace of God go I. Still, we all have a great ability to prioritise short-term interests over the long-term. For most people, community aged care is still in the long-term basket.
The fourth and final question is: can the federal government be expected to solve these two problems on its own? The short answer is that, while it can do a lot because of its control over funding, legislation and regulation, bigger issues are at stake. The biggest issue of all is about cultural change across the whole community.
For some this will be seen through the lens of individual change of heart and personal responsibility. We all need to take personal responsibility for changing our attitudes and priorities.
For others it is about broader systemic cultural change. In this light, the recent contribution by Kim Rubenstein and Trish Bergin of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation quotes the insightful saying by Annabelle Crabb that "Parliament House is - in many respects - a brightly lit model village of our national sentiment." It is a model village occupied by the privileged among us.
Seen in this light too, the aged care question is made clearer if aged care facilities, catering to an especially vulnerable age group, are also seen as model villages of our national sentiment. But this time, model villages for the vulnerable.
The problems in both Parliament House and the aged care sector reflect badly on our whole nation and we all should take responsibility for doing something to remedy the situation.
- John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.