Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Apparently the Prime Minister this morning told his party room, 'You do your job and I'll do mine.' It really raises a question, doesn't it: why bother starting now? More than 700 people have died in aged care with COVID this year alone, and we're about halfway through February. Why bother starting to do your job now, Prime Minister?

Every day, what we get from the Prime Minister and the ministers on his front bench and some of his very loud and talkative backbenchers is an attempt to divert from the failures that are racking up. The failures aren't just failures of politics; they are failures to resolve real problems, like the crisis in aged care, nursing homes and disability homes that is going unaddressed because all the Prime Minister can do is think up ways to try to campaign in question time and have scare campaigns about the opposition.

My community—like, I assume, many communities around this country—don't actually ask for all that much from their politicians and their leaders. They don't ask that much from government, except that they want a government that works in their interests and looks after them, particularly in their times of need and vulnerability. They don't want a government that fails to plan, fails to take action when it's needed and then makes last-minute announcements to try to patch over problems and fool people into thinking that it's doing its job or announces, just before an election comes, 'Now I'm going to do my job.'

Who suffers? Vulnerable Australian people. Two days ago, the CEO of Palliative Care South East in my home state told the Guardian:

… in the first three weeks after Christmas, as Omicron spread, she thought: "Oh my goodness, how are we going to survive?"

She says:

We had 50% of our staff furloughed on one day, and then to 25% on most days during that first couple of weeks of spread. But everyone from administration to senior management worked so hard to keep everyone supported.

She says:

… aged care facilities restricting visitors to the elderly in the last days of their life to avoid Covid spread was leading to thousands of people traumatised by a feeling they were unable to give their loved ones a proper goodbye.

Why is this the case? Because we have a prime minister and an aged-care minister who not only failed to reform the aged-care system and plan for the first wave of COVID but then failed to learn from the mistakes in that first wave so that people didn't have to go through the same thing again this year. There was an abject failure, no matter what the Minister for Health and Aged Care says in question time, to respond to the recommendations of the aged-care royal commission. If this Prime Minister thinks that his announcement of this $800 bonus for aged-care workers, with the last $400 to come just before the election, is going to fool people in the aged-care sector and people whose families are in aged-care facilities into thinking that this government is doing something to deal with the crisis, he's fooling himself.

This is an email I got from the manager of a local aged-care facility. I can't read out all of it, but here are some pretty powerful points: 'I'm writing to you to share how absolutely gutted I am about the selective aged-care worker bonus that was announced today. Tears well in my eyes as I write this email. I'm feeling absolutely hopeless that fair and equitable real change and recognition will ever happen in our sector. My staff are absolutely devastated that the government once again seeks to divide our workers into those who are valued and those who are left wondering what they did wrong. The government refuses to recognise the very valuable contribution of all aged-care staff who work in residential aged-care facilities, and again the reception, maintenance and lifestyle staff are cast aside as unworthy of recognition. Our resident services coordinator rang the director of nursing absolutely sobbing this morning when she heard the announcement, wondering why staff don't matter to the government. The government doesn't care about what they do. Why bother starting to do your job now, Prime Minister? You can't do it.

See this speech in context