Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] To come into this place to contribute to this debate on aged care and to excuse the loss of life—to suggest that it is ever acceptable for people to die in these circumstances simply because they were already on their way out—is absolutely vile and completely unacceptable. Those senators who have made those suggestions during the course of this debate should hang their heads in shame and, while they are at it, go and look at some of the accounts of what it is like to suffer with this virus and ask themselves whether they would be comfortable if their relative, their loved one, were ending their life struggling to breathe as their body shut down due to COVID-19.

Let us be very clear: the government had no plan. The regulator was ineffective and underfunded. The government failed to listen to report after report. The royal commission's report, titled Neglect, says it all in one word. There was failure to collect data. There was failure to support workforce. And as in aged care, so with disability: an ineffective regulator, no plan at the outset of the pandemic, failure to listen to reports, failure to collect data and failure to support workforce, and in addition to that a total and continual failure to provide the adequate financial support to those on the DSP and carer payment. And that is before we even touch on PPE and the preparedness of the workforce in terms of infection control. On aged care, the response of the government is to run a protection racket for one of the most incompetent ministers ever to congeal in a cabinet position within the coalition. Within disability, it has sent anxiety scorching and surging through the community, with the announcement of the proposed independent assessment framework for those participating in the NDIS.

I give this message very clearly to anybody watching at home: the Greens will continue to fight to hold this fool to account, and we will resist any and all measures to impose these assessment frameworks upon disabled people.