Senate debates

Tuesday, 1 September 2020

Questions without Notice

COVID-19: Aged Care

2:44 pm

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

I completely reject the premise of the question. We acted very quickly to bolster the aged-care workforce through the surge capacity we announced on 11 March this year. So we acted very quickly. Before Dorothy Henderson Lodge was over, we acted extremely quickly because we saw what had happened. We had received the advice of the AHPPC, so we put in place over $100 million in capacity for surge workforce early in March. So I completely reject the premise of the question. We acted quickly to make sure that resources were available to residential aged care in this country so that any facility that was impacted had the capacity to be supported by the government in the form that it needed to continue to provide quality care.

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