DAVID PENBERTHY
The truth about Oakden finally came out in 2017, and it has since closed, with several staff being weeded out of the system forever more.
The galling thing for Stewart Johnston today is that even amid this new scrutiny, and with governments talking the talk about transparency and disclosure, we are still seeing the same kind of obfuscation as epitomised by these official audits quoted above.
There is a view out there – held it would seem most fervently within the Morrison Government – that the media’s right to know campaign is a self-interested journalistic indulgence, aimed at defending the God-given right of the press to burst forth with any old piece of tendentious crap.
Stewart Johnston sees it differently. He sees cases such as those involving his Mum, and the absurd Blankety Blanksstyle guessing game with these new aged care audits, as a dangerous culture of censorship and deceit, that at its worst is actually a genuine danger to people’s health and lives. “If it wasn’t so serious you would think that it’s a joke,” Stewart Johnson said on
“Only now have we started to turn our attention to the fact elderly people are being beaten“
Before I could say anything she was gone.
She must have thought Lou attacked her little one, I’d better go and explain it had all been a misunderstanding, I decided.
Unfortunately for someone wearing a short saying ‘no bad days’ she seemed to be having one.
Old mamma bear was having none of my explanation and doubled down likening poor old Lou to a savage dingo.
Could you imagine if I had let Lou roam around up ending glasses of water and sticking her paws into acai bowls
Friday. “A report commissioned to shine a light casts a bigger shadow in its report. Good one. No wonder we are in this mess.”
The thing is, as Oakden tells us, the reason that questions go unanswered or words get blacked out isn’t to protect the patients or to protect the generally good reputation of aged care providers.
It’s to protect the really bad ones.
It has to stop, and as a starting point, someone in power needs to tell the people in the bureaucracy that it’s time to put the black textas away. willy nilly while I strutted my stuff in Lorna Jane and enjoyed my eggs benny without a care in the world?
The cafe owner would have laughed us right out the front door, and fair enough too.
I’m not one of these totally mad dog owners who treats my dog like a child but I draw the line at self-righteous mums telling me to control my dog when it’s safely secured to my chair.
I don’t think having a canine is the same as having a kid but I also don’t think having a kid makes you god’s gift to the nation.