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

It's a pity that the good senator wasn't listening to what the Prime Minister said yesterday, because yesterday the Prime Minister reaffirmed that the Defence Force is not a shadow workforce for any workforce in this country but particularly for the aged-care workforce. The announcement that we made yesterday was to pull together some targeted support for aged-care facilities that were in significant distress—that's what we announced yesterday—and to build teams in each state to support providers in each state. The Defence Force is not a shadow workforce. It is not a shadow workforce. The Prime Minister said that when the proposal was first put on the table, and he repeated it yesterday. So it would be nice if Labor senators opposite actually took notice of what was happening rather than just playing politics. They are exploiting the pandemic rather than doing what we're doing, which is dealing with the pandemic.

We continue to work with the sector to provide them with the resources that they need in support of their management of the pandemic: important decisions like the advice that the Chief Medical Officer made early in January so that more staff could go back to work quickly and safely in support of the residents in the residential aged-care facilities, a significant decision that has made a real difference to the capacity of the aged-care sector and facilities in particular to maintain their workforce and support residents; the supply of rapid antigen tests, which are now going to every aged-care facility in the country, with 2.5 million of them dispatched last week in support of the facilities that have an outbreak, the facilities that have contact and the facilities that require them for screening; the supply of PPE, where there were some issues coming out of the national stockpile, which we acknowledged, and we provided additional resources to support the sector in respect of those. (Time expired)