Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) 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.

Here we go again—another woeful performance from the utterly out of his depth incompetent minister for aged care, Senator Colbeck. There have truly been a sad series of days this week here in the Senate watching Senator Colbeck flail around and demonstrate day after day why older Australians and their loved ones can have no confidence whatsoever in the man who is overseeing and running our aged-care system in this country.

Let's be really, really clear: it is the Australian government—the federal government—that is responsible for keeping older Australians safe in aged care. It's not the state governments, it's not the territory governments and it's not local governments; it's the federal government that regulates aged care. It's the federal government that funds aged care. It's the federal government whose job it is to keep aged-care residents safe, and they have grossly failed in that responsibility.

The Prime Minister and the series of aged-care ministers we have seen in this government have failed to plan for this aged-care crisis, they have failed to act when the crisis hit and they have completely failed to take responsibility for the problems that are of their own making. The Prime Minister, as he is wont to do, says that it's not his fault, that it's not his responsibility, that there is no responsibility here and that none of these problems could have been anticipated. The only way you could not anticipate what we have seen play out in aged-care homes across Victoria is if you had kept your eyes shut, covered your ears, closed your mouth and ignored warning after warning after warning in the seven years this government has been in power about the state of the aged-care system and the risk that it posed to residents.

Today in question time we went to only a small number of the warnings this government have received. We would need weeks and weeks of question times to point out every warning this government has received. But let's be generous to the government and focus on just a small number of them. Six years ago this government was handed an aged-care workforce strategy by a committee chaired by an expert, Professor Pollaers, which illustrated what needed to be done to make sure that the aged-care sector in Australia had the workforce it needed. But as we went on to see, as with every other warning, that strategy was ignored. It was not implemented. In fact, just recently Professor Pollaers, who conducted that strategy, says that there has no progress by this government in implementing it and that in fact they have just sat on his report.

This government's sitting on that report has put the lives of older Australians at risk. They had the opportunity to get the workforce in place. They had a report that told them what to do, and they couldn't get around to doing it over the next six years, and we are now seeing the result of that. Last year the royal commission's interim report was handed down, titled Neglect. It doesn't get more obvious than that. What exactly did the government need from its royal commission to realise how serious the problems in the aged-care system were? Again, they failed to act.

Then we get to this year, once we see COVID hit, and we see all around the world the problems that are happening in the aged-care system, but nothing is done here to prepare. In March it starts impacting on Australian aged-care centres. At Dorothy Henderson Lodge, tragically, lives were lost. All the permanent carers were forced into isolation, because COVID got into the aged-care home. But still nothing was done. A month later, in April, we see it again: Newmarch House; 87 per cent of staff go into isolation. Again, older Australians' lives are lost because of the failures to take the precautionary measures needed. Then we get to Victoria, where it's run like wildfire through Victorian aged-care homes, and we are now seeing hundreds of older Australians die and over 1,000 aged-care workers contract COVID themselves. This government has known what needed to be done. It has had warnings repeatedly. It has failed to plan, it has failed to act and it fails to take responsibility. (Time expired)