More on the BUPA international chain of houses-of-horror . . .

Coinciding with a continuing expose by New Zealand news outlet,  Rova's Duncan Garner program, BUPA Aged Care Australia has become the subject of a class action in the Australian court system, for claims of “poor-quality care” in its aged care facilities.

The law suit, filed by Echo Law, covers the period from July 1, 2019 to April 1, 2025.

By failing to provide staffing levels that would meet minimum acceptable standards, BUPA has - it alleges - breached the contractual obligations it has with residents and contravened consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law.

The law firm points out that BUPA promotes itself as a high-quality provider with sufficient, well-trained staff ready to provide a high level of personalised support - but the evidence shows that BUPA’s facilities regularly and consistently fall below minimum acceptable benchmarks.

BUPA was one of the aged care centres found to have “unacceptably high levels of substandard care” in Australia's 2019-2020 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. The Royal Commission's findings included that for-profit aged care centres had systemic understaffing across their facilities, and insufficiently skilled staff in many instances, too.

Echo Law alleges that despite the Commission's findings, BUPA failed to change its practices.

A senior associate for the firm commented that by failing to provide adequate staffing levels, BUPA Aged Care had breached its contractual obligations to residents under its Resident Agreements, and that it had also contravened consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law by failing to provide services that are fit-for-purpose and delivered with due care and skill.

Aged care residents have the same rights as any other member of the community, the low firm's spokesperson said, yet those rights were all too often ignored.

And here's the "best" part of all . . . If any now much-needed "investigation" were to be conducted into BUPA's New Zealand operations, can we assume this err, "neutral" party (sarcasm fully intended) would be the one presiding over it?