Even before the royal commission, no one in Australia wanted to go into aged care. And little wonder. The interim report on aged care revealed an array of serious problems.

For far too many older Australians, the aged care system provokes the fear of being abandoned and dehumanised by an unsatisfactory system that appears to value continued existence to the almost complete exclusion of considerations of quality of life.

Aged care fosters dependence and strips autonomy by disallowing personal affects, enforcing rules and regulations, essentially rendering someone devoid of what makes them an individual.

For example at any given moment today, somewhere in...