Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I speak again today on one of the most serious issues that's confronting our country right now, which is the ongoing aged-care crisis that we see on the watch of Minister Colbeck and the Morrison government as a whole.

As I was saying earlier, this is not a new crisis that we have seen. The system has been in crisis for years, and it is a direct result of the cuts that Prime Minister Scott Morrison imposed on the aged-care sector when he was the Treasurer only a couple of years ago. Tragically, the chickens are coming home to roost from the decision to cut aged-care funding. We see every night on our nightly news programs the neglect, the ill-treatment, the staff shortages and the disgraceful situation which so many older Australians face each and every day. Of course, it has got worse following the COVID pandemic, following this government again dropping the ball and failing to take responsibility for an area that is 100 per cent their responsibility: being aged care.

We know that this Prime Minister and this minister do everything they possibly can to blame-shift—to blame other people, particularly state governments—whenever a problem arises. This is one that they can't blame on other people because the federal government is 100 per cent responsible for aged care. They are 100 per cent responsible for their failure to make sure that we have the aged-care workforce that we need as a country and to make sure that aged-care workers are paid a decent wage, so they are attracted to working in the sector and remain in the sector for years to come. It is 100 per cent this government's responsibility that they did not provide the PPE or the rapid antigen tests that aged-care facilities needed as we opened up as a country and as omicron raged across the country, particularly in aged-care facilities. Tragically, we see the result of this government's failure to do its job in aged care in the form of the 587 deaths that we have seen in aged-care facilities just since 1 January this year.

This minister's performance in question time today, I think, made clear why he is not the man for the job. He seems to be living on another planet when it comes to what's happening in aged care at the moment. He tells us on the one hand that we have had 587 deaths since 1 January, but he won't admit that this is a crisis, even when his own Prime Minister does so himself. Minister Colbeck chooses instead to reel off all sorts of statistics to assure us that the situation in aged care is not as bad as we all think it is. Well, hello? As I say, what planet is he living on? Does he seriously think that 587 deaths in aged care since 1 January this year is an acceptable result, especially when so many of those deaths arise from failures of this government to do its job, to get the PPE into aged-care facilities, to get aged-care residents boostered, to get masks and to get rapid antigen tests into aged-care facilities for residents and workers? That didn't happen, and we now see the consequences.

We focused in question time on one particular example: the Jeta Gardens aged-care facility south of Brisbane. That is something I've been paying close attention to, as we've seen an outbreak rip through that aged-care facility and it has now cost the lives of 15 residents of that home. There are about 180 residents and staff in total at that one home who have tested positive for COVID. There are alarming reports that have surfaced today in the media in Queensland that there is a severe shortage of masks for staff. Even now at the end, as this outbreak has been going for over a month, we have reports in the media today that staff have been told to only change their masks if they need to, because there is such a shortage of masks there. We learnt from the minister today that booster shots didn't even start in this facility until 31 January, one month after the outbreak began—one month of people catching COVID and dying from COVID before booster shots even started. If that is not a great failure of responsibility from this federal government, I don't know what is.

What possibly makes what we're seeing in the Jeta Gardens facility right now even worse is that this government knew that there was a problem. Just last year, the government's own aged-care regulator prepared two reports which said that this aged-care facility was non-compliant in meeting aged-care standards. It raised serious questions about the safety of residents. It raised serious concerns about the lack of a COVID outbreak management plan. But what happened? Again, this minister was asleep at the wheel, and we see the tragic consequences in 15 people dying. He has got to go. This government has got to go once and for all.