Daniel Wills: If the Oakden scandal doesn’t impact voters, how low have we sunk
IF the Oakden nursing home scandal doesn’t impact voters, how low have we sunk, Daniel Wills asks?
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NEGLECT permeates Chief Psychiatrist Aaron Groves’ harrowing report into Oakden.
At the level of the institution itself, there was clearly an uncaring culture among some staff who left the state’s most vulnerable abandoned in sweltering and drugged-up conditions which created heartbreaking human suffering over more than a decade.
At their worst, staff were physically abusive and could have caused or accelerated deaths in a place where patients expected care.
But, despite all promises that wrongs of the past have been detected and will be prevented in the future, one is left with a gut-wrenching despair about how they were propagated for so long.
The story of the past decade over Oakden is one of an executive government, and ministers, who did not care enough to turn over all the rocks and uncover the horror that lay beneath.
We now know, from the courageous statements of whistleblowers including Lorraine Baff and Stewart Johnston, that evidence of abuse had been present for years and systemically ignored.
Dr Groves states in his report that the situation at that site, which enacted practices that should have been abandoned a century ago, was best captured by the organisation phrase “the fish rots from the head”.
He is silent on exactly who is the head or where the source of the rot can be found, but it is a small leap in a Westminster democracy to say that a minister must pay.
One wonders what’s the purpose of elections, and the huge wage and trust that comes with being a minister, if not to make people responsible and accountable for what goes on in this state.
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Minister Leesa Vlahos was one of the few members of Cabinet remaining at work over the past fortnight, as others including Premier Jay Weatherill took advantage of a triple-header of short working weeks to check out and go on leave.
Consequently, she was left to fend for herself and carry the consequences of collective failure.
She deserves credit for being the first in a conga line of mental health ministers to finally show any sense that they cared about getting to the bottom of the issue.
After media reports of abuse allegations, she called a serious inquiry and is finally closing down the Oakden hell hole.
Ms Vlahos acted on Oakden, which is more than nothing, and much more than any predecessor did.
But she’s also been undermined by new evidence indicating she could still have acted sooner.
The Opposition was quick out of the blocks in calling for Ms Vlahos’ resignation.
After years in which the Government has ducked responsibility over everything from SA’s child protection disgrace to the state’s jobs crisis, the Oakden revelations felt like a final straw.
Not since former Labor Upper House Leader Bernie Finnigan was put up on child porn charges has a minister been sacked.
The public anger has grown, and this seemed a final straw. But it was in the following days that the evidence began to seriously mount.
Wednesday night brought the most compelling piece of evidence against her, a 2014 letter from federal Labor MP Tony Zappia that warned of “a high risk of severe injury or death” at Oakden that also stated a constituent had first-hand knowledge that supported the claim.
Ms Vlahos’ defence that the letter did not contain a name, and that she simply read a briefing from bureaucrats before signing off on a letter that dismissed the claim, is simply jaw-dropping.
The fundamental problem at Oakden was a culture of cover-up left unchallenged.
Already, it is screamingly clear that executive government failed to challenge it and is therefore complicit.
Depressingly, this is not the first time we have seen such a trend.
The Child Protection Systems Royal Commission revealed a shocking lack of executive oversight and care in looking after young and vulnerable people. The Oakden report found the same among the aged.
This is not a culture isolated to one aged care home in the inner northeastern suburbs.
It permeates all of the State Government. And, if the evidence of a Royal Commission and the Chief Psychiatrist can’t convince you of that transparent truth, nothing in this world will.
Mr Weatherill was conspicuous in his absence this week.
As a human horror on the same scale or greater than the Don Dale detention centre scandal broke in his own backyard, Mr Weatherill stayed on holiday.
It was a coloured flourish in the portrait of a Government that appears to have given up caring or thinks any policy failure can be corrected by creative campaigning.
Labor has good historical evidence for thinking that a crisis like this won’t hit the ballot box.
The Debelle inquiry into cover-ups of sexual abuse at an Adelaide school consumed the headlines for a year but failed to dent Labor as it ran for successful re-election in 2014.
But this crisis has a very different impact.
Unlike the child protection system, which accepts the hardest and most hopeless cases of kids who have been abandoned or abused by their families, literally anyone could find themselves sucked into the helpless horror of a place like Oakden.
Few would not have had the experience of a relative with mental difficulties who has needed the last resort that is seeking care from the Government, or could at some point in the future.
Many people will also fear they too could one day have to turn their life over to help from others.
In a state with one of the nation’s oldest demographics, this may be an issue that bites, especially as other health services in SA remain in uncertain stages of “transformation”.
Or maybe it won’t, and this is simply the deplorable standard we have now come to accept.