Ageing with Dignity

Ageing with Dignity

Victoria  spends under $1bn specifically on aged care services, with the following outcomes:         

    

  • The minimum daily allowance for food and preparation approaches $4-6 per day in some homes, with an average of $6 +, v convicted felons of $8.25 , a community spend of $18-22
  • Well over 50 % of aged care residents have some symptoms of malnutrition
  • Aged care homes in Victoria have been likened to Guantanamo Bay.
  • 18 residential aged care home and 5 home care service providers failed to meet the required standards.

Private aged care homes are profit driven, confinement v care homes, offer super returns to investors, provide a minimum level of service and operate behind a complex, opaque, indecipherable series of contractual terms for residents with nowhere else to go.

The current tax regime is unsupportable – seniors with houses worth $ms , with no assessable income, can claim state pensions and social security through their aged care lifetime , while struggling, working families renting, with taxable income in excess of $20,000, pay for it.

With 1.25m seniors now, which will double in 25 years .

Radical action is required now!

Politicians must:

  1. Recognise the scale of future demographic challenges, plan and finance the required build and support.
  2. Pursue a public partnership v wholly private solution, identifying “poster child” providers whose model is to be replicated elsewhere.
  3. Elevate minimum nutrition, clinical and care resourcing and standards.
  4. Reform the fiscal regime to ensure a fair share of financing v the future burden falling on our children.
Spring Street Cash Splash

Spring Street Cash Splash

Spring Street  splashes out over $65 Bn of taxpayers hard earned cash each year; more than the amount Australians are able to afford to contribute to their super each year.

This hard earned cash is being misspent  on roads to nowhere, level crossings in the sky, giveaways to well-heeled sporting bodies and make work projects. It should be invested in:

  • supporting the homeless and destitute for shelter and regaining their lives
  • assisting the disadvantaged and troubled with centres for treatment and remediation
  • getting off the train of outsourcing aged care and elderly retirement services to the private sector
  • and invigorating communities – making them more secure by deploying surveillance, prevention and detection technology  solutions.
  • and harnessing the energy of Victorian, across the generations .

The Premier and his team hold the Andrews  Book of Records for the most expensive road in the world – which was never built !

The cost to cancel was $1.1Bn – more than spent on new schools, aged care services for the elderly,  hospital improvements and 40 times what the 2017-18 state budget reported to be spent over 3 years on improving rooming houses.

The Premier received  over $11bn for selling the Melbourne ports and wasn’t going to leave it to his successors at any cost, opting to spend it on make work construction projects .

With an $8.3Bn tag and rising every day, and up to 50 level crossings, the price tag is ballooning out, with it shaving off 1-2minutes or less  off journeys, but offering an “open wallet” for all the construction stakeholders.

Providing a $225m funding facility to the AFL , the ultimate well heeled sporting body , to revamp the Etihad stadium and associated sporting facilities.

It’s all wrong – The Mad as Hell party will sort it