Abstracts & Presentation Summaries - Department of Health

"Keeping a social sentient being like an elephant in solitary confinement is unnatural and
inhumane as it provides no opportunity for natural interaction which is necessary for mental
and physical well being.” 3
Arna’s isolation contravenes the N.S.W. Exhibited Animals Protection Act. If
elephants manifest a set of identifiable physical responses to loneliness, and this is
deemed to constitute cruelty, how might we think about the loneliness of fellow
humans?
Evidence is now available to sustain the proposition that social isolation is a risk
factor contributing to ill health. However in our readiness to respond to experiences
of isolation of people and elephants, we need to consider the context in which they
occur. Arna’s experience of loneliness has developed since her companion, Bambi,
died in 1996 and since that time, Arna has lived alone. For many people isolation is a
consequence of the loss of partners, family, friends, work, neighbourhood and
community associations. For others, isolation is a consequence of physical and
mental health status, immobility, distance, culture, marginalisation, poverty and/or
social exclusion. Responding to Arna’s circumstances is relatively straightforward;
find new elephant friends. However responding to the complexities of human social
isolation involves fundamentally deeper considerations about the meaning of social
experience it-self.
Policy context
The central contextual issue here is how Australian public policy structures support
frail older people and people with disabilities in the 21 st century. An uneasy linkage
of human rights and economic rationalist logics have transformed 20 th century
institutional models of service provision for these groups. The provision of public
sector support for older adults and people with disabilities characteristic of the post
war welfare state is being weakened by the climate of dependency panic which
currently sits over Canberra and debates regarding inter-generational equity.
The traditional mix of public policy initiatives which enabled older people, in
particular, to live with some measure of security (home ownership, public health care
and income support) are less certain to-day. The projected costs associated with an
ageing and disabled population represent key drivers for substantial policy change
through tighter targeting of income support, health care and pharmaceutical benefits.
It appears to be in the national interest to age independently.
Under the banner of welfare reform many areas of public policy have been subjected
to the budgetary cleaver. Contrary to this trend HACC is something of a neo-liberal
paradox where funding actually grows rather than shrinks. HACC reflects an
exemplary model of ‘more for less’; more funding and less demand on residential
care; more independent living and less dependency on the public sector.
The conceptualisation and development of HACC in the 1980s represented an
innovative program of reform. With the benefit of hindsight I think it can be argued
that HACC represented an early version of Third Way politics. HACC speaks the
language of community, independence, efficiency, system reform, targetted
intervention, rights and responsibilities. This is the language of modernising
3 ‘Arna’s Story’, Animal Liberation, N.S.W. http://animal-lib.org.au/ama
2