Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No-one could help but be moved, thinking about how difficult it must be to be someone facing the end of their lives and unable to be with their families, unable to have the comfort and support of the people with whom they have travelled the journey of life. I can speak from experience. Early on during the aged-care impacts of COVID-19 I lost my grandfather, and it was very difficult not to be able to be with him in the last moments of his life. He's a man I loved. He immigrated to this country from Austria. He built a life here. He came with very few skills. He was a person who worked in the textile factories at the time he immigrated, and by the time he finished his career he was a foreman at Kimberly-Clark, making the nappies that I suspect my children wore for the many years they were small. And he was a thoroughly good man. But he died alone.

None of the criticisms that are being levelled by those opposite are in a logical sense truly connected to my experience of loss or to the experience of loss that many other Australians have undergone in recent times, as we have all as a nation had to adapt to the difficulty of the restrictions that come with COVID-19. It's hard even now for people with a loved one in aged care not to be able to give them the usual support and care they ordinarily would give with love as an expression of gratitude for the many gifts that the older person has given throughout the course of their life. It remains difficult, but it's also reflective of the collective sacrifices Australians from all walks of life are making as we attempt to get under control a virus that is ravaging the world. It's ravaging people's health, it's ravaging our economy and it's having knock-on consequences for communities everywhere.

So to acknowledge the hardship that comes from this difficult time is a very different thing to trying to pretend that this is all about the minister's role. The minister has stepped up enormously during a difficult time. There have been fast adaptations of a big industry to hardships that have been quite unprecedented.