Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

It is pathetic, Senator McAllister. We have an aged-care system in crisis, run by a pathetic, incompetent minister: the see-nothing, say-nothing minister with no plan and no action. He is the quietest of the quiet Australians when the topic is the bare basics of his job.

This was preventable; this was avoidable. This did not have to be. What will it take for this Prime Minister to publicly acknowledge that thing he's done privately, and that is to bench Minister Colbeck due to his sheer incompetence? The Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for his failings and the failings of his minister. We are all wondering now: what does this minister do? He's had core responsibilities stripped from him because his own Prime Minister knows that he's not up to the job. But he continues to draw a ministerial salary paid by the taxpayers of Australia. Senator Richard Colbeck is in fact Australia's most expensive job keeper. Australians are paying far too high a price for Minister Richard Colbeck. He has to go.

We've seen hundreds of avoidable deaths and more than a thousand elderly Australians fighting the virus today. Overworked and undersupported staff are waging war against a shocking disease, with no training and a single glove. That's the kind of PPE that our aged-care workers have been provided with—not even two gloves, because not enough PPE has been supplied by this government. The Australian people deserve better than this. Our grandparents deserve better; our parents deserve better. Instead, they got this Morrison government and this incompetent minister. He has to go.

Question agreed to.