I have now done my best to describe the extraordinary policy failures that have done nothing to improve VIC frontline services, with record suicide rates.
- The failure of the Rosy Batty panopticon: MARAM has replaced frontline workers’ judgement with a centralised information-sharing system.
- The failure of AHPRA regulation to hold medical bad actors to account.
- The use of mandatory mental health orders thrown around like lollies to destroy lives.
- How child protection steals children willy-nilly with no accountability.
- The rise of weaponised social workers, undertreated and overempowered, without strong ethics.
I must also say also that no system can control for psychopaths, so, in a sense, all of the above systems are victims in my case.
However, they are still guilty and less than robust. If one psycho nurse can completely undermine all anti-violence systems across half a city, then the foundations of that system are fundamentally weak. I would like to offer a solution. It is very far from perfect, but it is a starting point.
The Australian Health Professionals Regulation Agency (AHPRA) needs a new regime for bad behaviour in medical professionals
Currently, it operates on a “he said, she said” basis, masquerading as regulation and investigation, while in reality dismissing nearly all cases because the evidentiary burden for complaints is too high.
It should move to a licensing system for practitioners based on publicly disclosed demerit points.
For medical practitioners, a demerit point system could be as simple as your licence. Accumulate enough of them, and the medical practitioner is banned for an appropriate period. It is the reprimand system that AHPRA currently lacks.
To prevent abuse of this system, I would accompany this proposal with legislation that imposes severe penalties for false reporting, including substantial fines and jail for recidivism. This law already exists but is almost never enforced. A new policing agency working alongside AHPRA will be needed to investigate complex cases where clashes of view are central.
All of these systems are obsessed with anonymity for reporters to protect the whistleblower. This approach clearly does not work; it hides the investigative process and gives the institution a chance to conceal its own blunders.
Second, AHPRA must expand to cover all social workers. AHPRA only costs $400m a year. Double the budget, and it’s done.
Rebrand the whole agency as the Australian Medical Standards Board.
Third, I would also force universities to integrate stronger medical ethics for social workers. I doubt many of them have even heard the term “non-maleficence.” They’re trained as interventionists, but lack the skills to intervene.
These simple solutions will significantly increase the consequences for bad actors in the practitioner community and for false reporting, and they will finally give us a system that demands adherence to medical ethics. Plus, it empowers the consumer to enforce it.
Other reforms include eliminating IAOs, which do far more harm than good (a direct quote from a doctor who runs them across a large swathe of Melbourne).
A system like this would have stopped everything that happened to my family and the thousands of other horrible abuses that have occurred in the decades. The suicide rate would halve because many take their own lives because the system pushes them to do so by abusing them at their lowest point.
Sadly, Australia’s bogan clinicians need the stick, not the carrot.
I note that the Victorian Labour government, which transitioned the frontline system of mental health, family violence and child protection into a failed automated social engineering experiment at the cost of tens of billions, is vulnerable at the polls and should be voted out on this issue alone.
It is fantastically ironic that Dan Andrews is in charge of Orygen, a service for triaging youth trauma. And yes, before you ask, the psycho nurse also corrupted it. When I pointed it out to them, they tried to delete the documents! This mindset is the ethos that must be eliminated.
Internal Labor research has identified Allan, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll and ministers Natalie Suleyman, Vicki Ward, Lily D’Ambrosio, Paul Edbrooke and Nick Staikos as at serious risk, according to a leaked list of Labor’s priority electorate campaigns.
Those seats for priority campaigning are Northcote, Preston, Ripon, Niddrie, Greenvale, Narre Warren South, Narre Warren North, St Albans, Sydenham, Eltham, Mill Park, Point Cook, Werribee, Macedon, Eureka, Mulgrave, Mordialloc, Bendigo East, Albert Park, Box Hill, Monbulk, Cranbourne, Frankston, South Barwon, Bellarine, Clarinda and Bentleigh.
Finally, let me say that, while this campaign has been something of a departure for MB, these arguments are economically powerful. A more effective suite of frontline services systems would save every state countless billions of dollars each year in resources and lives. Recall every ambulance and police car plastered with complaints a few years ago? The issue was not really about money. It was about a broken system that treats them like shit. What is a senior police officer to think when a teenage social worker orders them to give a 14-year-old kid an IAO? Most older frontline workers joined up to help their communities. Too many of the young are their for power.
In closing, let me say that, despite my ordeal, the insight and empathy of Footscray Police, plus that of the Crime Investigation Unit, saved my family’s life. The Children’s and Magistrate’s Courts proved very transparent and useful in confirming and unwinding the entire sorry tale.
That said, if I can leave you with one thought, it is this: Australia desperately needs a Bill of Rights to protect the citizenry from its broken governance bodies.
Lest by the grace of God, go you to Hellbourne.
