Wednesday, 17 August 2022

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into Support for Older Victorians from Migrant and Refugee Backgrounds

Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (10:24): I am pleased to rise this morning to make a contribution on the committee report entitled Inquiry into Support for Older Victorians from Migrant and Refugee Backgrounds, which was tabled earlier this month by the Legal and Social Issues Committee. You are well familiar with that of course, Deputy Speaker, because you were the chair of that committee and did a great job in that capacity. I was pleased to join as a member of that committee from 14 October last year and to participate in that particular inquiry.

I just wanted to touch on a few matters from that report, and it contains 61 findings and 76 recommendations, so it is a very comprehensive document. The inquiry received 73 submissions and held five public hearings, with some of those being online as well as at the locations of Coburg, Geelong and Ballarat.

In terms of the contents of the report, the headings of the various chapters I think say it all. Chapter 2 talks about improving services, and there are 21 recommendations linked with that. Chapter 3 talks about leveraging the value of bicultural workers. Chapter 5 addresses social isolation and loneliness, and that contains five findings and six recommendations. Chapter 8, which is the one I want to focus on this morning, talks about enhancing responses to elder abuse, and that contains 11 findings and 14 recommendations. I will come back to that in just a moment. But overall the report acknowledges that certainly more can be done to increase multicultural older people’s awareness of available support, to build their trust in government services, to reduce the stigma associated with accessing care and to provide services that meet their cultural and spiritual needs. It was certainly very informative, as we received a wide range of submissions and had various hearings with organisations and individuals that had experience in this area, to hear their stories and to receive their information about their experiences in relation to dealing with government and so on.

We know that culturally diverse older people can certainly find it difficult to access services due to all sorts of barriers. They are matters that we often take for granted, but they can include language, transport, housing, finances and visa status. The committee looked at many of the challenges in that area, including, as I said, social isolation, barriers to economic and civic participation, digital exclusion, elder abuse and cultural inclusiveness of aged care. Amongst the recommendations there were various initiatives to increase the financial health and digital literacy of culturally diverse older people and to support the expansion of activities to reduce the social isolation of older people and facilitate their civic and economic participation. One of the recurring themes in the evidence that the committee heard was the fact that for many people where perhaps English is not their first language in particular it is extraordinarily difficult just to do many of what we would call ordinary, mundane, day-to-day things—and certainly as one gets older. It was very obvious to the committee members that for the cohort of like-minded individuals or individuals with the same multicultural background in many cases it became quite isolating once their inability perhaps to get out became apparent as well. So there are a number of very specific issues that particular cohort faces.

As I said, I want to quickly touch on some of the recommendations regarding elder abuse, because I think this is a very important issue in our community generally. But certainly it is a very, very important issue for older and multicultural Victorians, migrants and so on, as I said, where perhaps English is not their first language, and they can be very, very vulnerable to this sort of activity. It is important that the government reads, responds to and takes on board these important recommendations that have been made. Recommendation 56 talks about the government developing a strategy to prevent and respond to elder abuse in Victoria, which should include specific actions for culturally diverse communities, be built on past research and reviews and also refer back to the guiding principles that the committee included in chapter 2 of the report.

There are a number of other recommendations, which I will not have time to go into in great detail, but I just ask for the government to ensure that there are elder abuse awareness raising campaigns and education campaigns for all older community members.