Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member's question only indicates his lack of understanding about how advice from the AHPPC is dealt with by the Minister for Health. The report today, I note—and I will ask the Minister for Health to add further to the answer—does not reflect how those processes are normally handled. They have been handled in the way they always are. I speak to the minister for aged care every single day. He is part of the hook-up that we have with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the health minister and myself, in particular reviewing aged-care issues on a daily basis, which we have been doing for some time. The minister for aged care is regularly providing briefings to the Expenditure Review Committee of cabinet, as more than a billion dollars has been added to our COVID support in aged care, and, in addition to that, providing briefings to the National Security Committee of cabinet where those matters have been relevant to his portfolio.

Over these many months the minister for aged care has been responsible for the outcomes that I referred to earlier, which have seen Australia be in a position where 97 per cent of facilities in this country, despite the significant community outbreak in Victoria, which the Leader of the Opposition has a blind spot on—the Leader of the Opposition believes that in Victoria there's nothing going on when it comes to community transmission, that there has been no failure of quarantine, that there has been no failure of tracing. The Leader of the Opposition seems to think that everything is okay in Victoria, and that there have only been challenges in aged care. The Leader of the Opposition has a blind spot on Victoria. What we are doing is addressing the challenges that have resulted from the outbreak in community transmission in Victoria—

Mr Bowen interjecting—

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