Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

Not only did we not ignore it—so I again completely reject the premise of Senator Carr's question—we continued to build our workforce capacity through the pandemic. We continued to provide additional resources, and we continue to do that. In fact, we are working with other sectors to train staff and to build on workforce capacity. One of the reasons we built the arrangement with the Victorian government to close elective surgery was to provide not only additional capacity in the workforce but also beds within hospitals to relieve the stress on aged-care facilities. In fact, the hospital agreement which was part of the COVID national health plan, which pre-dates all of these circumstances, was put in place to ensure that we have the capacity to meet the needs of older Australians.