At the Orange Senior Citizens & Pensioners Centre, model-amn has rented out a small room to speak to some seniors, with the amount of seniors being within the legal limit, and hand sanitiser and masks available.

"Today I'd like to talk about aged care, and the horrific state it's currently in. In an opinion piece for the ABC, it was declared that "Aged care failures show how little we value our elderly". The food served can be disgusting, facilities can be massively understaffed, and frankly they're often used as places for families who don't care to dump their mum or dad until they die. I wish that wasn't true, but it is.

And in case you're wondering the contempt some people have for seniors, look at a piece the ABC published the day before. "This woman's treatment may be shocking, but it's not assault." This woman in question had a broken leg and dementia. She had a tendency to forget she had a broken leg and would try to leave her bed. In one case, she was left writhing on the floor for 20 minutes. These so-called carers, who are often imported from other countries to work on little wages, forced her into the bed, and shoved her head down as she tried to defend themselves. In one instance, she had a pillow held over her face. It was reported that these "carers" laughed in her face as she lashed out at them for the attack. Yet this isn't assault. Incredible.

A magistrate acquitted these bums. He said that the woman with dementia who had a broken leg was "often violent and abusive towards staff". Gee, I wonder why she might have not been the friendliest to these abusers? And this is the issue with our so-called care system. Nurses can regularly be in charge of dozens, even hundreds, of patients. You can see why even the most well-intentioned of people would find this hard to deal with. They're paid barely anything, and we're having to import in, as I said, you know, foreign labour! Do you think that some 20 year old from New Delhi being paid the minimum wage will care about the welfare of seniors?

The aged care crisis that Australia is going through can be comfortably ignored by most people who aren't seniors. We don't have politicians in Canberra who are willing to actually do the hard work of reforming this system, because it's not me in there being abused and being fed glop. This is a key reason as to why I'm running for Parliament, because I want to see seniors being given a voice, someone up there bringing solutions to our problems. And I think the only thing more shameful than this epidemic of abuse in our aged care homes is that our politicians haven't acted on it."