Dr Gerald Segal, AMA Spokesperson on Aged Care with Richard Perno, Radio 2CC

SEGAL: They certainly did. They worked extremely hard. It was an excellent summit, with people coming out with an excellent vision - the vision is quite complex as you would expect, but very interesting. They dreamed that things could be better, of course, and of course they dreamed of how we should make it better.

QUESTION: Practical things?

SEGAL: Very practical things.

QUESTION: Right.

SEGAL: Such as, lets start planning now, so that the workforce is able to work in a better manner so that it's up-skilled, that it can work in places that are better. The other point that we made is that residential care is not what aged care is all about. In fact, most people think that we are going to change the balance from residential back in to the home. We talked about technology, we talked about smart homes, smart homes being ones that have built-in to them all the things that make a place safe so that elderly people can live there more easily.

QUESTION: Such as railing and non slip flooring and that type of thing, I gather?

SEGAL: Yes, and even electronic type gadgetry. We talked about all the sort of things that are happening that can help us monitor and make sure if a persons fallen over you'll know about it, instantly.

QUESTION: Yes. Alright, it is not politicised is it? I mean, are these real up-and-going things that we can achieve now from 2008?

SEGAL: Yes, this was not about politics. In fact, a strong emphasis that came out of this was a recommendation that the National Aged Care Alliance be recognised as the body for aged care, and that governments work with this in a bi-partisan manner.

QUESTION: Yes.

SEGAL: Aged care is too important to be point scoring on. We actually called for two committees to be started. One is a taskforce that needs to get going immediately after the election…

QUESTION: Right.

SEGAL: ….Where all sides of government are involved, all parties and the National Aged Care Alliance to start just helping to fix up the real mess we are in at the moment.

QUESTION: Yes.

SEGAL: But the more important one to be a long term committee to put in place this vision, and again always bi-partisan, there is no point doing it the other way. It hasn't worked, and it will never work that way.

QUESTION: Well, I hope you got it all in hard copy?

SEGAL: We certainly have.

QUESTION: Good. Well, keep on it, and we'll keep in touch, and we'll keep on it as well, Gerald, thank you again for updating us.

SEGAL: Pleasure.

Ends