Ask a Secretary! Mike Kaiser (former) head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet (Qld)

We return for 2025 with a series on the Oakden Older Persons Mental Health Facility, an SA Government run facility whose scandalous conditions and institutionalised elder abuse were exposed in 2017, prompting (among other things) a Commonwealth Royal Commission.

In this episode, we unpack a missed opportunity in 2007 to move Oakden from a mid-twentieth century asylum to a modern aged care facility, when the facility failed Commonwealth accreditation standards.

• Why is it so easy for executives to mobilise resources in a crisis, but so hard for managers to redress chronic under resourcing?
• How do you make sure you keep your eye on the long-term solution when the spot light is on?

Intro and outro grabs from the RN Background Briefing episode A Failure to Care: The Oakden Nursing Home, featuring Carla Baron, the aged care consultant who quit in 2007 because she didn’t think management wanted to change.

You can find the full ICAC Report into Oakden here, and the Chief Psychiatrist report here.

Now for some appropriately bureaucratic disclaimers....
While we have tried to be as thorough in our research as busy full time jobs and lives allow, we definitely don’t guarantee that we’ve got all the details right.
If you want rigorous reporting on Robodebt, we recommend the work of Rick Morton at the Saturday Paper, Chris Knaus and Luke Henriques-Gomes at the Guardian, Ben Eltham at Crikey, Julian Bajkowski at The Mandarin, and of course, the Robodebt Royal Commission itself.
Please feel free to email us corrections, episode suggestions, or anything else, at [email protected].
Thanks to PanPot audio for our intro and outro music.
'Til next time!