Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement on Sunday that his government would establish a royal commission into Australia’s aged-care sector was the inevitable political response to one too many scandals.

The final straw may have been the terrible footage last week of an elderly man being assaulted by a worker in a nursing home on Sydney’s northern beaches.

The assault was secretly filmed and showed the worker hitting the man with a shoe and shoving and dragging him while trying to remove his clothes.

It was horrific, disgraceful and disgusting.

Sadly, though, it was not unique.

We have seen too many stories in recent years of appalling treatment meted out to the elderly and vulnerable at a time of their life when they deserve only compassion and respect.

Our ageing population has turned aged care into a lucrative cash cow for unscrupulous operators who might seek to cut corners with the care they provide and turn a blind eye to some of the staff they employ.

These are the operators who treat their clients as numbers, who see the revenue rolling in one side of the ledger while doing all they can to keep expenses down on the other.

They make savings where they can – poor quality food, too few staff – and enthusiastically feather their own nests to ensure they never have to end up in the same hellholes they’ve created for others.

Of course, that’s not all aged care operators and, most likely, not even the majority.

We have to hope that the worst offenders represent just a tiny minority of the sector, but the greatest concern is that the families of these elderly victims often have no way of telling the good facilities from the bad. Until it’s too late.

So now, just as we saw with the banking sector, the aged care industry is to be subjected to the close scrutiny of a royal commission – and we should brace ourselves for many more atrocities.

It is going to make for painful, uncomfortable viewing but there is no choice.

We owe it to this country’s elderly – and the families who love them – to ensure no-one spends their last days in fear and degradation.

If we cannot do even that for our most vulnerable, then we have no right to call ourselves a civilised nation.