ABSTRACT
Janna Thompson, feminist, social justice advocate, and internationally esteemed professor of philosophy, died on 24 June 2022, as a result of multiple brain tumours. [...]the importance of apologies for past wrongs: she observes that authorised apologies on behalf of communities have a range of notable features, but their main point is to "signal that a nation or organization repudiates injustices of the past and is committed to just dealings with groups that were persecuted or oppressed" (Thompson, "Apologising," 2020: 1041). [...]in accordance with her lifelong commitment to social justice, the novel explores the loss of human rights and the low social status blithely assigned to older people by institutions, governments, and culture. Along with the shocking and disproportionate Covid death rate among aged care residents, the epidemic highlighted the abuse of human rights with respect to residents' loss of liberty: they were locked up in their rooms, locked away from families and friends, and locked down in unsafe environments. In her pivotal essays, Sarah Holland-Batt, an award-winning poet, academic and aged care activist,3 has damned the Federal government's failure to prepare Australia's residential aged care facilities for Covid outbreaks (September, 2020), and has exposed the immorality of current Australian society: "We treat older people as a separate and subhuman class, frequently viewing them as a burden on their families, the community and the state" (May, 2020).