Oakden whistleblower Stewart Johnston says vested interests have undermined aged care CCTV trial

The man who triggered the Oakden abuse scandal says “vested interests” have undermined plans for aged care CCTV surveillance. But SA Health insists his claims are baseless.

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CCTV monitoring the safety of residents of aged-care homes in SA will be a “joke”, the man who drove its introduction says.

Oakden whistleblower Stewart Johnston resigned from the steering committee charged with planning the CCTV trial last September in disgust with red tape and amid allegations of SA Health officials’ “vested interests”.

Whistleblower Stewart Johnston, the son of an Oakden victim, says vested interests have weakened plans for CCTV surveillance in aged care homes. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Mr Johnston told a parliamentary committee the planned pilot, by British firm Care Protect, would have included monitoring using analytics that picked up sudden movement, such as a fall or an assault, rather than simply being live cameras, with a goal of alerting a facility of such an incident within one minute.

Care Protect walked away from the deal amid Mr Johnston’s allegations it stood to lose intellectual property. Instead, an SA firm will install systems in a trial at two facilities, rather than five as originally planned. “The safety and safeguarding of the people will be non-existent without the sort of independent monitoring Care Protect was offering,” Mr Johnston said.

“This system being put in South Australia is a joke.”

Mr Johnston also raised conflict of interest claims among senior SA Health officials, saying one told him what was needed was “the analytics of what Care Protect can do, then we can do it ourselves”.

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He told the committee he became aware of emails between a senior bureaucrat with links to IT firms and Care Protect, where the public servant described himself as a “consultant”.

“He was asking Care Protect to hand over crucial details of their camera system,” Mr Johnston said. He gave copies of the emails to Health and Wellbeing Minister Stephen Wade’s staff.

SA Health officials investigated the allegations of conflict interest and said the claims “could not be substantiated”.