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

That was a nice deflection from the government senator on that side! We don't hear her saying anything about the closing of the Tasmanian borders by Premier Gutwein, because he just happens to be a Liberal premier.

But I'm not going to have my attention diverted from where it should be, and that is on the minister for neglect. We have seen day after day, death after death, the minister come in here and accuse the opposition and anyone else who wants to hold him accountable for his responsibilities as the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians of playing base politics. Well, for those who are listening, base politics is: when you are a minister of the Crown the buck stops with you. You are responsible. You are accountable and responsible for your portfolio area, and unfortunately—and it is unfortunate—too many older vulnerable Australians have died under Minister Colbeck's watch.

But it also goes all the way to the top—that is, to the Prime Minister. We have known for more years than we can count—since this Liberal government has been in power—that the aged-care sector has been in crisis. We have been calling out for more unannounced visits to residential homes, and what have we seen? No action at all by this government. The minister today could not answer in response to questions in relation to whether or not he could confirm that, from July to September last year, standards were not met in 37 per cent of site audits and 100 per cent of review audits. What is he doing? What is this minister doing to restore the confidence of the Australian people so that they can have confidence, if their loved one has to go into residential aged care, that they're going to be safe? He's not done anything.

You know how there are some television programs that say, 'Call a friend'? Today in question time, I was waiting for the minister to call Minister Hunt. Yesterday it was quite extraordinary that in a supposed joint-media conference, we had the Minister for Health talking over the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians. It was supposed to be for an announcement over aged care—one to put on another bandaid. We know this government is very, very good at making announcements and having a photo op, but they fail in the delivery.

We know that there has been warning for month after month that the impact COVID-19 was going to have on older residents was going to be enormous. Older Australians are all vulnerable, but if you were in residential aged care you were more vulnerable than those people in the wider community. We know there have been failings of this government for almost eight years to address the training of people who work in this sector, we know that there was not PPE available to those who were caring for the most vulnerable in our community and we know their compliance failure has been too high. But we've seen nothing. There have been excuses from this minister coming into this chamber, blaming everyone else for his failings as minister. If you accept the portfolio responsibilities then you have to take responsibilities for the failings. It's not as if the government and the minister had not been briefed over and over and over again.

I've lost count of how many reports there's been into the failings in the aged-care sector, but we've had seven ministers in seven years and each and every one of them has failed to fundamentally fix the very broken system. The fundamental funding of the aged-care system is broken in this country. We've waited seven years and have had no action, and now we have a minister who wants to blame everyone else and accuse Labor—and anyone who disagrees with him and who wants to hold him accountable—that we're playing base politics. Base politics, as I said from the outset, is a minister being responsible for his portfolio area. The Prime Minister is responsible, and gave a commitment at the last federal election that he would make aged care a priority. He has failed dismally. He fails every single day when he doesn't have the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians in the cabinet. That's where the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians belongs. (Time expired)