Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to COVID-19 and aged care.

In question time today, the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Colbeck, admitted that the Morrison government's cabinet was not briefed about the Victorian outbreak until 5 August. That is more than six weeks after initial cases were identified, and, on that day, there were already 1,435 COVID-positive cases linked to aged-care outbreaks. There were nearly a hundred facilities impacted. Sadly, on that day, the day the cabinet was first briefed, another 10 Australians died. I extend my condolences to everyone who has been touched by this crisis in aged care through losing loved ones, to those in hospitals, to those battling the virus, and to those who have been sick with worry and haven't been able to see their loved ones.

Let's be clear: the Morrison government have responsibility for aged care in Australia, and they have failed to protect aged-care residents from this virus. This failure hasn't happened overnight. It has been years in the making. The Morrison government have failed by not having the aged-care portfolio in the cabinet. They have failed by having review after review but then doing nothing to act on them. They have failed by not dealing with the serious and escalating workforce issues, which have been known and about which reviews have gathered dust on their desks for years and years. They have failed by cutting billions of dollars in funding over several budgets and then using weasel words to pretend they never did. Well, budget papers don't lie. The Morrison government have cut money that was meant to go to the aged-care sector. The Prime Minister, as the Treasurer, was the architect of those cuts, and those cuts have taken a fragile system and broken it. There is clearly no redundancy left.

The real-life experience in Victoria, which we have seen play out in heartbreaking scenes, is that aged-care facilities have had no capacity to deal with a virus like COVID-19 when it came into their home. We've seen images of elderly Australians being evacuated from their homes malnourished, dehydrated, missing medication, soiled, distressed and alone. So don't stand here and tell us how fortunate we have been. Don't say how well we've done. Don't try and shirk responsibility and blame others. People in aged care in Australia today don't need spin and a rewriting or a convenient interpretation of what has happened in Victoria. The facts speak for themselves.

From mid-June, when positive cases in Victoria started to rise, what did this government do to protect residents of aged care? They knew they were vulnerable. They knew from what had happened in the northern hemisphere: when community transmission rates increased, the risk for people in residential aged care increases exponentially. They already knew that. From a handful of cases in early July to 1,000 cases by the end of that month, more than 125 facilities had outbreaks, and there were more than 335 deaths and more than 2,000 cases linked to aged care. No matter which way the government tries to spin the crisis in aged care, these facts tell a story of failure—failure to protect vulnerable citizens from COVID-19 getting into their homes and then failure to stop the spread. This is the result of a system that remains hidden from public view, housing vulnerable people, the quietest of all Australians, who, after doing their best for this country, have been abandoned by a Prime Minister who is quick to point the finger at others but who clearly didn't do enough quickly enough, by a minister clearly without authority or influence and by a system that has been fractured by neglect, underfunding and the indifference of this government over seven long years.

The royal commission heard compelling evidence that the system for older Australians is 'woefully inadequate'. That is a quote from a report titled Neglect, which was given to this government in November last year. The title speaks volumes. The royal commission itself has put in writing that the system is woefully inadequate. They knew this in November. The royal commissioners go on to say:

Many people receiving aged care services have their basic human rights denied. Their dignity is not respected and their identity is ignored. It most certainly is not a full life. It is a shocking tale of neglect.

We say older Australians deserve better than this.