Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on this matter of public importance. According to the minister for aged care, the aged-care system has been coping with the omicron variant extremely well. That is a direct quote: 'extremely well'. That is an opinion that the minister might have formed from his VIP seats at the fifth Ashes test. Of course, if the minister had done his job and fronted up to the Senate committee on COVID-19 instead of fobbing us off to go to the cricket, then the minister would know that the aged-care system is not actually coping extremely well. Usually, if a system is coping extremely well, you don't have to call the military in to provide emergency support! If the minister, instead of going to the cricket, had done his job and talked to aged-care residents and families—or just simply read the paper—he would have known things are not going extremely well. He would know that more than 500 Australians in aged care died from COVID-19 in January alone. But the government says, 'Don't worry about that.' The minister for health said 60 per cent of those who died in aged care 'were in the absolute last days of their lives'. How is that for a message from the Morrison government? 'In the absolute last days of their lives'—that's how it described those people who lost their lives due to COVID. What a reassurance from the government to those people who lost loved ones and those who fear losing their loved ones! I doubt that that provides any support to the families of those who have tragically passed away. Is this really the point we've gotten to in the government's handling of the pandemic, that we are now just brushing away hundreds of preventable deaths as being insignificant?

What's going on in our aged-care sector is unprecedented in Australian history. The fact is that the vaccine rollout had started months and months behind. If the booster rollout had not started months behind, we might have been in a better position. Then we would not have seen hundreds of unboostered aged-care residents tragically passing away in January. But that is the aged-care system the government insists is performing extremely well. If the minister had spoken to aged-care providers instead of going to the cricket, he would have known that this isn't the case. Mike Baird, a former Liberal premier of New South Wales and current CEO of aged-care provider HammondCare, has been calling for the Australian Defence Force to be called into the aged-care sector since mid-January. It took more than three weeks for the government to heed that call—and, as always with this government, it's too little too late.

If the minister had spoken to aged-care workers instead of going to the cricket, he would know things are not going extremely well. Aged-care workers are under unbelievable stress. They can't access rapid antigen tests. They can't access enough PPE. They can't access enough N95 masks. It has been a year since the aged-care royal commission handed down its final report. Let's remind ourselves of what the report said:

Australia's aged care system is understaffed and the workforce underpaid and undertrained.

…   …   …

The bulk of the aged care workforce does not receive wages and enjoy terms and conditions of employment that adequately reflect the important caring role they play.

…   …   …

Inadequate staffing levels, skill mix and training are principal causes of substandard care in the current system.

That's what the aged-care commission made very clear—and it couldn't have been clearer to anyone reading those words. There's a link between the conditions of the aged-care workforce and the quality of care. A year on, the government hasn't learnt a single thing.

Unlike the minister, aged-care workers aren't blowing off work for VIP tickets to the Ashes. Aged-care workers, most of whom are in insecure and precarious jobs, are being pushed to the limit. Nine in 10 aged-care workers are either casual or part time. They are in danger of their shifts being swapped, or cut, at the drop of a hat. Many are expected to remain on call all day, every day. Last year Sherree Clarke, a casual aged-care nurse, told the job security committee:

You can't plan anything because you don't know what your roster is going to be from one fortnight to the next. When my mother went through cancer, I couldn't tell her that I would support her for her cancer appointments, because if you're not available to pick up a shift, they don't offer you that shift the next time.

For all of this, they are woefully underpaid. These are people tasked with looking after our parents and our grandparents. These workers are sometimes responsible for every facet of senior Australians' day-to-day lives, and they're receiving barely above the minimum wage.

Another casual aged-care worker, Anu Singh, told the job security committee last year that at her workplace there were just two carers for 20 residents. They would have 20 minutes with each resident. She said:

In those 20 minutes, we used to wake up our residents, who were about 90 years old, and do showering, toileting, dressing and undressing; tidy up their rooms; make their beds; and then take them slowly to their dining. Can you imagine doing all this just for yourself in 20 minutes?

That's while making barely above the minimum wage. And this was even before the pandemic. Does it sound like the aged-care system is doing extremely well? On top of that, there's the completely botched COVID-19 response. So I support in the strongest terms the Health Services Union's comments and I call on the government to back the HSU's application for a decent wage rise for aged-care workers. It's the absolute least this government can do for those workers.

The other point I want to cover is the stress the pandemic is having on the supply chains as a result of the government responses to these problems. We've seen workers at Teys meatworks in Naracoorte being forced to work while COVID positive. We've seen truck drivers and supply-chain workers forced to continue to work tirelessly to keep shelves stocked even as the government stands by and allows their jobs to be undermined by companies like Uber and Amazon—the race to the bottom. We've seen retail and logistics workers forced to continue working even without fair access to rapid antigen tests.

This week, the Retail Supply Chain Alliance came to Canberra to call for government backing for the new supply chain safety principles. The three principles are very simple but very important. The first is that we need COVID safety supply chains. That means free and accessible rapid antigen tests for transport, logistic and retail workers not just for their own personal safety but to keep all Australians safe and to keep supply chains running. The second principle is that we need to secure working conditions in supply chains. That means immediate government action to stop the race to the bottom on working conditions that is being driven by companies like Amazon. The third is that we need a supply-chain committee. Throughout this pandemic the government has failed to listen to advice from medical experts and from the industry. Instead of sensible planning and thoughtful solutions, we had ideas like children driving forklifts—just absurd! We need a committee that brings together government, industry, unions and workers to find real solutions to supply-chain issues and to ensure that we don't have any more stupid and deadly ideas like kids on forklifts.

Supply-chain workers, aged-care workers, health workers and workers across Australia deserve better than insecure work, wages failing to keep up with the cost of living and a shortage of rapid antigen tests. This government needs to act and it needs to act now. It's not a job well done.