Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start this matter of public importance today by making a confession. I was given the aged-care portfolio by the Leader of the Opposition about a year ago. And, prior to that, as a member of parliament, I have to be honest and say that aged care was probably more in my peripheral vision than front and centre, where it should have been. I wasn't paying enough attention. That's the honest truth.

It wasn't until I became the shadow minister that I sat down and read the interim report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety in detail. The parliament knows that that report was entitled simply Neglect. The first 10 pages of that report are the most damming, shocking indictment of the neglect that has been shown by those on the other side of the House to aged care that you will ever see. I implore Australians: have a look at that report. What it showed us is not just the things that many of us had seen on the news, the fact that there are people in aged care who had maggots in their wounds. It told us about the endemic problems in this system, that there are problems in aged-care homes across this country with fundamental matters of care—things like the management of wounds, things like people sitting in urine and faeces because their aged-care homes were rationing continence pads. The royal commission called this system cruel and harmful. The words of one aged-care advocate were detailed in that report, and they still ring in my head today. It was a woman who said, 'Don't let this happen to anyone else.'

If this were happening to any group other than the aged, we would be marching on the streets in protest, but there is something wrong with the public debate about aged care in this country. I have watched in dismay in my role as this issue rolls onto the front pages as a new crisis comes, and then, days later, someone on the front bench sends a nasty text to someone else and off it drops.

I want to say to the Labor people behind me that our responsibility is to stop that pattern. We've got to train the attention of this parliament, the press gallery or anyone who is participating in public debate on this matter and not let it fade away. Because what was a neglect when the royal commission interim report was made 18 months ago or longer has today become an emergency. We have now overlaid a pandemic on top of a system that was in crisis, and today we are seeing a system that is in a state of failure. An aged-care home just near the Prime Minister's electorate shut its doors a few days ago, and 64 residents now have to find a new home in the middle of a pandemic, and I think that we're going to see more of it.

I want to tell the parliament some of what this crisis looks like on the ground today as aged-care homes across the country stumble and in many instances fail to manage fundamental aspects of care in the middle of a pandemic. I want to talk about Michelle from South Australia who wrote to me because her mother passed away on 21 January after she found her slumped in a chair unable to breathe. The aged-care home was running on skeleton staff, and this woman and her daughter had to administer oxygen themselves. Her mother passed away that day. Julie from Brisbane wrote to me because her mother-in-law with cancer was locked in her room for 17 days straight. She regularly sat in the shower for hours at a time, immobile, because there were no staff to come and help her. I got an email from Clare from Sydney, who has a 99-year-old mother in aged care. She had to take her own mother out of the home to get her vaccinated herself because she knew that COVID was going to hit that centre before the government's delayed booster clinics got there.

This is what is happening in aged care today. We've got outbreaks in almost half of the aged-care homes in this country. Now, the government has known about this for years and, instead of doing something to fix this problem, what have they done, Deputy Speaker? They've cut funding—twice. Mr Morrison—the Prime Minister of this country, who talks a big game about how much he cares for the elderly—twice, as Treasurer, cut funding to aged care.

One of the most shocking things that the final report of the royal commission told us is that, even before we got to the pandemic, two-thirds of aged-care residents today are malnourished. They are literally starving, because they do not have enough to eat. They are under the care of the Australian government. Can you imagine being the Prime Minister of this country and knowing about that for a year and doing nothing about it? Because that is the situation we have today. It is a scandal: a scandal of neglect and a scandal of incompetence.

While we're on the subject of incompetence, I want to talk to you about the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services in the other place. I mentioned something about the minister yesterday, and the minister who's opposite me at the table here said, 'This is all about politics.' No, this is not about politics. We are in the middle of a one-in-100-year global pandemic, and the minister responsible for almost 200,000 of the most vulnerable people in this country goes to the cricket for three days during the worst of the crisis. He cannot tell us basic facts about what is happening in aged care. If there is one indictment on this minister, it is the fact that there was no COVID plan for aged care in the first wave of COVID, there was no COVID plan for aged care in the second wave of this pandemic and there was no COVID plan in the third wave.

We have got people in aged care being profoundly affected by this system and we've got the minister going to the cricket. So this is not about—

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