James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have been listening very carefully to all of the speeches that have been made in this debate but in particular to that speech by Senator Smith that just preceded mine, because she made a very important point in her speech but perhaps didn't realise quite the point she was making when she did so. Senator Smith said that everybody in Victoria is scared. And she's right. As a senator for Victoria and as someone who has just come here to Canberra from Victoria, I know that there is no question about that. A lot of Victorians are afraid. A lot of them are scared about the impact this virus will have on their health and, indeed, the impact that the restrictions put in place to fight the virus will have on their livelihoods.

But there is a clue in that observation by Senator Smith about what the problem might be here. She didn't say, that everybody in her home state of South Australia is scared. She didn't say everybody in New South Wales is scared—another state that has had some outbreaks—or indeed any other state or territory in the federation. We have heard a lot from Labor senators this week about the responsibility that the Commonwealth government has for regulating and funding aged care, and we absolutely accept that responsibility. But the Commonwealth has a responsibility for funding and regulating aged care in every state and territory, not just in Victoria.

So what is different about the problems we are seeing in aged care in Victoria? Is it that the Commonwealth has decided to regulate and fund aged care in Victoria differently? Is it that they provided greater assistance to New South Wales or South Australia or any other state or territory? Or is there something different about Victoria? Clearly, there is something different about Victoria. We have widespread community transmission in Victoria. We don't have it in any other state or territory. Touch wood, I hope we never do again. But we have a very serious second-wave outbreak in Victoria, and that has nothing to do with the Commonwealth's role in regulating or funding aged care. In fact, it's got everything to do with the utter incompetence of the Victoria state government.

I noticed in Senator Smith's contribution before—just as has been the case in every other contribution made this week by Labor senators—that the words 'the Andrews government' or 'the Victorian government' never pass their lips. Never do they point out that we have a problem in aged care in Victoria—unique, so far; we hope always to be unique in Victoria—and not anywhere else in the country. They haven't shown any interest at all—they have made no contributions at all—in how we got to where we are in Victoria. But they should, because we've seen day by day—whether it is through the hotel quarantine inquiry, whether it's before the COVID-19 committee of this Senate, whether it's before the parliamentary inquiry happening in Victoria—that, in the words of the AMA president of Victoria, watching the Victorian government's response to COVID-19 has been like watching a slow car crash.

It has been a disastrous response. It has been a response that has shaken the confidence of all Victorians and, unfortunately, it has been a response that has directly led to the deaths of hundreds of Victorians, including many in aged care. The Victorian government bears the responsibility for this outbreak because the Victorian government has mismanaged hotel quarantine. They've known for months, but we learned last week, that at least 99 per cent of the current outbreak in Victoria is as a result of the failure of hotel quarantine. That's a system that the Victorian government entirely devised and set up on their own. It's a system where they had offers of support from the Commonwealth in the form of ADF assistance, which they turned down and which Daniel Andrews misled the Victorian parliament about, which has been confirmed by Lieutenant General John Frewen before the COVID-19 committee.

They are responsible for this outbreak. They are also responsible for their failures of tracking and tracing. Professor Brendan Murphy, our former chief health officer, now the secretary of the department, gave disturbing evidence last week to the COVID-19 committee, where he revealed the shocking failures of the tracking and tracing system in Victoria. He revealed how underutilised they were, how underresourced they were, how they failed to use the COVID-19 app like the New South Wales government has successfully done. He pointed out that the whole reason this small leak in hotel quarantine became a massive outbreak across Victoria is because of those failures of the Victorian government. No-one in this place should take seriously any lecture from any Labor senator if they fail to mention these facts.