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

The $1 billion that we've made available to the aged-care sector to manage the COVID-19 outbreak is not all just paid to the aged-care sector. There are a range of programs that provide different levels of support under different programs, whether that be to pay for surge workforce, for example, whether that be to support the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre, whether that be to support mental health or whether that be an uplift to provide capacity for the sector to deal with additional costs that they're facing with COVID-19.

One measure in that sense was a $205 million general uplift that we provided to the sector, and we will be seeking a reconciliation of that amount. We are looking to get a sense of what's occurred with the funding that we provide into the sector, because we think it's appropriate. The other funds, such as those that support a facility that might have had a COVID outbreak, will be repatriated to the facilities based on accounting and paid in arrears. So there will be a clear understanding of what that funding was used for and a capacity for us to reconcile that against the accounts and the expenses that a facility may have occurred in managing a particular outbreak.