Vietnam veteran says negotiating the aged care system is worse than war and PTSD

My wife and I are in our 80s and have been together, through thick and thin I must acknowledge, for 60 years. Despite a year being shot at in Vietnam, the worst period of our lives together has been the last two years engaging with aged care and providers. Yes, worse than a war.

We have encountered many well-meaning folks but none seem to know how to help us to navigate this awful time. We both have packages but have very little understanding of them.

My dear wife is blind and has very little mobility while my major problem is PTSD from that horrible war. Trying to make use of these packages is a nightmare.

Our carer organisation contacts us once a month just to confirm we are still alive, I suspect. When we joined them, I thought they would act on any request we make.

The last was to see if they could take on our excellent gardeners, who charge rather a lot. I was told they are not "onboarding" any new organisations.

We have decided we will stay in our house, look after ourselves as long as possible and then become a burden for someone else. Until then, we will be useful to our family and to those we help as volunteers.

But we will never consider ending our own lives.

I can never forget my wife's father calling to me the last time we were able to speak; "Son, get me out of here."

Jackie French is quite right about the aged care system being broken. We arranged home care for Mum and experienced problems from the very first day.

The litany of issues over the ensuing months included serious stuff like not giving Mum her medications and not ensuring she was eating properly. So, clearly training of staff was sub-par.

Each time I complained to the relevant authority (the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission); the relevant authority wrote to the service provider; the service provider replied along the lines of "Sorry, won't happen again"; and the relevant authority then closed its file on that complaint. This farce was repeated over, and over, and over again.

It didn't matter how often problems recurred, there were never any consequences for the service provider not meeting their side of the bargain (and endangering Mum's wellbeing in the process). Worthless (and repeated) assurances by the service provider were all it took to satisfy the relevant authority's requirements.

The stress of trying to keep Mum safe at home was replaced by the stress of trying to ensure the service provider was keeping her safe at home. The latter ended up being more stressful than the former.

Without some real accountability, there is no motivation for service providers to lift their game.

Crispin Hull claims Trump's campaign against Iran is illegal because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal stopped Iran ever obtaining nuclear weapons and Iran was abiding by it ("Trump's war in Iran is criminal", June 3).

In fact, the JCPOA's sunset clauses meant many restrictions on Iran's nuclear and missile programs would soon have expired.

The JCPOA inspection regime also had gaping loopholes, and even so, Iran was breaching its inspection and disclosure obligations from the start.

The military campaign is legal as self-defence because of 47 years of attacks by Iran and its proxies on US forces and Israel, and, as recently explained by Marco Rubio, because Iran was building a "conventional shield" of missiles and drones behind which to redevelop its nuclear weapons program.

Contrary to Hull's claims, Israel has complied with international law in its wars. It has only targeted combatants.

Civilians get caught up because of the terrorists' illegal tactics of embedding themselves in civilian areas and sacrificing civilians as shields, but Israel makes more efforts to warn and evacuate civilians than any other army.

Israel is only increasing areas it controls in Gaza because Hamas refuses to disarm as required and continues attacking Israeli forces.

As sure as a cold Canberra winter, Keith Hill (Letters, June 2) paints the opposition in a negative light and refuses to accept that the current Labor government is on the nose.

"Divisive and fringe issues are suddenly finding populist support," he opines.

I wouldn't call the divide in Australia under Albanese's failure to address major issues like anti-Semitism, cost of living, cost of electricity (and lack of it), lack of public housing, high immigration, lack of honesty and transparency, record spending, highest household spending ever and the habitual lying a fringe issue that is all of a sudden popular.

Why do people like Hill not want to criticise the government that has the opportunity and power to do something.

It is very easy and convenient for him to look at someone like Pauline Hanson and portray her party as some kind of monster.

Hill may be right when he states One Nation may be light on political experience, but that could be seen by many as a good thing.

People here and overseas are getting sick of lifetime politicians with no life experience telling them how to run their lives.

Albanese and his party are a great example of this with many including the leader himself having virtually no experience in the real world or private business.

Hanson and others in her party, on the other hand, have worked running a business which would lead to more experience in the real world in which most people live.

She has been consistently honest, whether you agree with her or not, about her views and ambitions.

Compare this to Albanese who has real trouble in telling the truth and flip-flops on decisions and policies.

Voters should be very careful about what they voted for.

Crispin Hull castigates Australia's conservative press for its lies and misinformation about the tax on trusts ("The death tax is a lie," May 27). Yet his own analysis is similarly distorted, albeit from an ostensibly more progressive perspective.

Hull asserts that only the very, or "uber" rich will be worse off under Labor's proposed changes to taxation of trust income. His focus is exclusively on the use of trusts for income splitting among beneficiaries.

He ignores the various other purposes for which testamentary trusts are created.

Of particular concern is Labor's intention to levy a minimum 30 per cent tax on the income from discretionary testamentary trusts that have been established to protect the interests of people with disabilities and others who may have higher healthcare costs and poorer employment prospects than average and/or who may be vulnerable to financial and coercive abuse.

Even a modest trust income for these people will be taxed at the same average rate as an employee earning approximately $125,000 a year.

A beneficiary receiving a trust income equal to the minimum wage would pay two-and-a-half times the tax of a person earning that wage.

It would be easy to amend tax regulations to inhibit income splitting without imposing such an unfair tax burden on vulnerable individuals. For example, each discretionary testamentary trust could be limited to one beneficiary as is already the case with trusts for those with "severe" disabilities.

Income from the trust and other sources could then be taxed on a genuinely equal basis for all individuals.

Labor claims its reforms are designed to set a tax rate "commensurate with the tax rate paid by most workers" but the crude, blanket reforms it is proposing for discretionary testamentary trusts do the opposite, further penalising already disadvantaged members of the Australian community.

Anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of how Australia got lured into the AUKUS deal should read Andrew Fowler's book, Nuked - The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia's Sovereignty.

Most disturbing is how the Coalition and Labor put the interests of Australians second to their selfish desire to win government.

Fowler writes, "Now Labor is left to make work a deeply flawed scheme that, more than ever before, ties Australia's future to whoever is in the White House". To quote Henry Kissinger, "it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal".

No one likes war in the way it is going on now. The amount of money wasted in the last five years in the Middle East, Ukraine, many African countries and in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan would have surely been better used to solve the food, health and education problems of many developing countries.

It goes without saying that without the US continuing to give Israel roughly billions of dollars each year in weapons and money Tel Aviv wouldn't be able to sustain its war on Gaza, start a war with Iran, repeatedly bomb Yemen, and, most recently, invade southern Lebanon.

In light of Australia's experience with its second-hand USN amphibious ships Kanimbla and Manoora (both prematurely removed from Australian service), and the second-hand USN Seasprite helicopters that were a billion dollar failure, are we hoping that the second-hand USN Virginia submarines will be third time lucky, or are we setting ourselves up for a multibillion-dollar failure?

We are told our low birthrate is unsustainable and that a high level of immigration, with all its current adverse economic and social consequences, must be maintained. It remains to be seen whether the voters, especially those looking for affordable housing, agree.

Mokhles Sidden asks why Lebanon is left to face Israel alone (Letters, June 3). Israel is not fighting Lebanon. It is fighting Hezbollah, which is meant to have disarmed under previous ceasefires and started the current conflict by attacking Israel. Lebanon's government has also demanded that Hezbollah disarm, but Hezbollah refuses.

Crispin Hull ("Trump's war in Iran is criminal. Here's why he should be indicted", June 2) argues there "are only two legally valid reasons to go to war: self-defence and UN authorisation. Trump's attack on Iran met neither of the criteria." Which rock does he live under? Iran has been attacking the US and its allies since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Ian Jannaway disingenuously asks why he should respect Reconciliation Day (Letters, June 3). "What offence have I committed?" he asks. For a start, how about lacking compassion for the 238 years of death, destruction and dislocation inflicted on First Nations people since 1788, damage which Mr Jannaway's wilful ignorance can only perpetuate.

Keith Hill (Letters, CT, June 2) when attempting to discredit the popular Pauline Hanson's One Nation does not mention that when in government, One Nation will have advice, support, administrative assistance and guidance from all federal departments and the thousands of bureaucrats and political and economic experts who work in them.