As the former job rep at the Monash Gardens nursing home, I attended the Victorian ANMF’s annual delegates’ conference on 26 and 27 June.

Assistant State Secretary Pip Carew delivered the report on aged care, mentioning the gallant struggle against privatisation of Monash Gardens. After a 10 month battle with the local council, Monash Gardens was sold to Royal Freemasons, which took over in May.

The report included a painful reminder of the human cost of running aged care for profit. We were told of the recent Coroner’s Court finding in the case of Norma Bensley, 92, who died in February 2009 at the privately run Templestowe Pioneer’s Village. A newly qualified nurse was on her first solo shift and was responsible for medicating 49 residents. Being short staffed that day meant the nurse was also monitoring residents in a communal area.

This impossible workload led to a fatal medication error. The Coroner found that “systems error” led to Mrs Bensley’s death. The kind of “systems error” that means care staff are not replaced when they call in sick is rampant in aged care, causing additional injury and fatalities. Unfortunately, it is rarely considered newsworthy.

The conference was addressed by Victorian Health Minister David Davis, who assured us that 535 of the promised 800 beds for Victorian hospitals had been delivered. This is untrue: there have only been 35 additional beds, and this only because Albury is being included in the Victorian figures in the latest statistics.

Between sessions, delegates discussed shared problems: understaffing, management rationing, and fears about the changes to Medicare were common themes. The most disappointing aspect of the conference was that these discussions weren’t reflected much in the conference sessions. 

We had two sessions about doorknocking in marginal seats, but nothing on how 70,000 Victorian ANMF members could mobilise our strength in industrial and political action to meet the serious challenges we face.