Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start my contribution to this very important discussion on the government’s failure to adequately prepare the aged-care sector for COVID-19 outbreaks with the words of my constituent Cecilia from Langwarren. She wrote to me: 'This scenario was entirely predictable, but it has taken this pandemic disaster in aged care to reveal the saddest, most horrific and shameful we-told-you-so moment in this nation's history. The measure of this nation and its people is how we treat our most vulnerable and how we rectify these wrongs.' The first step in rectifying the wrongs is acknowledging that they happened, followed by actually putting in place measures to make sure that they don't happen again. Every death is a tragedy. The deaths from COVID we have seen in the aged-care sector, particularly in Victoria, over recent weeks are a tragedy for the husbands and wives of those who are in aged-care, for their children, for their friends and for our community. I don't think it's too much to say that we are a community in mourning.

I accept one thing that was said by the speaker before me, the member for Barker, about nothing being perfect. Nothing is perfect, but that doesn't mean that, here in this place, the people who have the responsibility for making a system as good as it can be can use 'nothing is perfect' as a defence for the flaws. We know that aged care is the responsibility of the federal government. We know that the Morrison government regulates aged care. We know that it funds aged care, and many, many constituents have raised with me that it is not adequate funding. We know that the Morrison government has legislation that determines the quality of the aged care that older Australians get. If these things aren't working, the first step is to acknowledge they're not working, apologise sincerely and without equivocation and without blame shifting for the consequences of the fact that they're not working, and then get on and fix them.

Standing here today and talking about the failures in the aged-care system is not political pointscoring. It's not opportunism. It's the role of federal members of parliament to hold to account a federal government that is responsible for a system which is not working as it should be for some of the most vulnerable in our community, all of whom have lived a life that involved people who they love and people who love them. They have contributed in so many ways to the community that we have now and that those of us in this place are privileged enough to live in. This is not political pointscoring; it is the role of this place. If we don't do this now, in six months time are we going to be having another interim report from a royal commission about the failures in the aged-care system? Are we going to have another hearing where we hear about reports that were never actioned, where we hear about plans that didn't exist and we hear about hundreds and hundreds of Australians who have died sooner than they should have without being able to say that last proper goodbye to their families? No-one in this place, on either side, wants this, which is why we have to do what we are doing today, tomorrow, the next day and every day until the Prime Minister stands up and acknowledges that it's not good enough and it needs to be better.

I've been contacted by constituents who work in the aged-care sector who say they have been working at residences where there have been two carers for 60 residents, many of whom were ill enough to be patients. Cecilia is a registered nurse and is mightily concerned about the way in which the role of nurses in aged care has been undermined and dismantled. Constituents have been contacting me about not being able to see their relatives and being deathly scared of their future. Better needs to be done.

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