Senate debates

Monday, 31 August 2020

Matters of Public Importance

COVID-19: Aged Care, COVID-19: Aged-Care Workers

4:35 pm

Photo of Helen PolleyHelen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of public importance: the decision by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Colbeck, to turn his back on his accountability and responsibility to this parliament, on the families, children, grandchildren, siblings and friends of each and every one of the older Australians who has died in aged care as a result of COVID-19 and on the 200,000 Australians in aged care and those who put themselves at risk every day to care for them.

We've been saying from this side of the chamber for some time that there needs to be a plan. The contributions this afternoon are no different to the contributions of last week when we were raising these issues of concern. But we've had our leader, Anthony Albanese, state very clearly the principles of his plan going forward for the aged-care sector. I think it's important that we outline that strategy, because we know the Prime Minister of the day, Mr Morrison, has no plan for the aged-care sector in this country. He's had seven years to come up with some sort of strategy and plan but hasn't got one.

The first point is on having minimum staffing levels in residential aged care. The second is on reducing the home-care waiting list so more people can stay in their own homes for longer. The third is on ensuring transparency and accountability of funding. The fourth is on independent measurement and public reporting as recommended by the royal commission. By the way, the Liberals called a royal commission into their own failings. The fifth is on ensuring adequate PPE in every residential aged-care home. The sixth is on having better staff training, including on infection control. The seventh is on having a better surge workforce strategy. The eighth is on providing additional resources so the royal commission can inquire into COVID-19 without delaying its final report.

We had the minister come into this chamber last week and say he'd had nothing sensible in terms of suggestions from the opposition. I dispute that categorically. Our shadow minister has put forward strategies, but if the minister couldn't understand those strategies then we have an eight-point plan from Mr Albanese. Senator Colbeck, the minister responsible, and the Prime Minister, can take it and run with it. That would be a very sensible idea.

Let's talk about those deaths that have been experienced in the aged-care sector in this country during COVID-19. It's all very well for people to want to blame the Victorian government for the deaths in this sector, but, quite frankly, the government have known since January at the very least, if not the end of last year, the consequences of COVID-19 and the potential it had to decimate older people, particularly those in residential care. And what did they do? They didn't do anything. They certainly didn't do enough. What did we hear this afternoon? We heard the Minister for Health outline another bandaid, putting another bandaid on what is a broken system. It was not the minister responsible for aged care, no. They had to get the Minister for Health, because the Prime Minister, quite frankly, doesn't trust the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians to make, yet again, another announcement.

We have known, as Senator Siewert has so eloquently outlined in her contribution to this debate, the failings of this sector to address the needs of older Australians, the failure of this government to ensure that there is a properly skilled, trained workforce that report after report have highlighted demonstrates the need to have a national standard of training for those working in aged care. Those failures didn't just happen in the last six months with COVID-19. There is no planning. We've had report after report. Even the government's own workforce taskforce that brought down its own recommendations have not been heard by this government and, certainly, no action has been taken.

Let's look at the app—the waste of money spent developing an app that was going to trace the transmission of COVID-19. It was another waste of money because it failed. Those opposite want to continue to blame everyone else and won't take any responsibility. We know the hallmark of this government under Prime Minister Morrison is no transparency, no responsibility and no scrutiny. Even today, when putting that extra Band-Aid on the aged-care sector by announcing some more money, the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians walked away without answering all the journalists' questions. You can run away from journalists, Minister, but you can't run away from scrutiny. You cannot run away from the scrutiny of this chamber and the Australian people.

For seven years we've been waiting for a plan from those opposite. We've all had relatives—our grandparents, our parents, our aunties or uncles—who've experienced residential aged care. We know there's been failing after failing of all the reports that have highlighted the difficulties. We know that those opposite realised, long before COVID-19 hit our shores, that the aged-care sector was in crisis. Why was it in crisis? Because the funding instrument is broken. There aren't enough staff. We need to double the workforce in this country to deal with the ageing of our own population. In my home state of Tasmania, we need an additional 5,000 workers over the next decade. Where are those people coming from?

But the irony is people who work in this sector are committed; they're caring. Most of those who are working in this sector are women who are low paid. We talk about respecting those older Australians who have come before us because they're the ones that built this country. Well, it's about time that we used the light that has been shone on aged care right now to ensure there's adequate funding going forward. We need to know what it really costs to give the highest possible care to older Australians. We need to ensure that those working in this sector are there because they want to be there, because they're highly-skilled and because they are resourced to ensure the best outcomes for older Australians.

The minister, today, when asked about how many older Australians in residential care have died from neglect, couldn't answer. He said, in his own words, the aged-care sector really is about older people dying in residential homes. I was staggered, absolutely staggered. I can assure you, my relatives, when they've had to go into residential care, never went in there believing that it was just a matter of course that they were going to die. They went in there expecting that they would be cared for, that they would be supported, and that they would get to live out their final years with good care, with comfort and surrounded by people who had time to give to them. This minister is quite clearly out of his depth. But the responsibility really lies at the top and that's with the Prime Minister, because any minister responsible for the aged-care sector in this country should sit around the cabinet table. The sector wants a cabinet minister, because they know that if you're not sitting around that cabinet table you have no real say in the government when it comes to budget. In the last seven years we've had seven ministers, who have all failed, and most of them have shown very little interest in this sector. Labor has always said, over the last seven years, that we believe there should be a minister sitting at that cabinet table. No accountability, no responsibility from this Prime Minister is going to be accepted by the Australian people. You have time, Prime Minister, so step up, take some responsibility and do something now.

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