Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the member for Corangamite for moving this motion and bringing this debate to the parliament. The aged-care crisis is an utter disgrace. This is a national emergency. This is a national crisis. It is not an exaggeration to say that. Right now we have more than 1,100 separate COVID outbreaks in aged-care facilities across this country. Many of our most vulnerable Australians, in their frailer years and days, are isolated in their rooms week after week. They are alone and scared. Some of them are in their last days and they will die alone because the government didn't order enough rapid antigen tests to give to the aged-care facilities and they can't have visitors.

They rightly expect the government to support them, given all they've done for our country. One quarter of workers' shifts are unfilled. That means no food, no showers and no toilets. Aged-care residents across the country are left untoileted and unbathed. There have been more than 640 deaths in aged-care facilities this year alone, many of which were preventable. They should not have happened. Those older Australians should be alive. They are literally dying because of this government's inaction.

What is the government's response? The Prime Minister's standard formula—to deny there's a crisis. He says there's no crisis. In fact, the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services said that it's all going 'exceptionally well'. Why is the government calling in the Army if there is no crisis? The Prime Minister lives in denial. Some 60 per cent of workers still haven't had their booster shot, and we know the difference that the booster shots make to transmitting COVID. They slash the risk of outbreaks. More than 60,000 residents, our most vulnerable Australians, have not had their booster shots because of this government's incompetence.

If denial doesn't work then he distracts. He was washing a woman's hair in a hair salon—in a downright creepy fashion, frankly—when he could have gone to an aged-care facility and washed someone's hair which actually needed it. He could have done something useful with his time. If that doesn't work then he deflects. He tries yet again to blame the states, just like he did during the Victorian outbreak in 2020, when the vast majority of deaths of Victorians were in Commonwealth run aged-care facilities, because of his failure and neglect.

When all else fails he dreams up something, but it's always too little too late—like the insulting $400 bribe to aged-care workers. It's another bribe that runs out, of course, around the election. Do you know how many aged-care workers are going to get that $400? Six per cent, because it's pro-rataed. What this government has done to the aged-care sector is criminal—casualisation. Only six per cent of aged-care workers in this country have a full-time permanent job. Only six per cent of them will get the $400. The rest of them would be lucky to get $100 or $200. That is not dealing with the aged-care crisis. It's an announcement that he made up to try and survive the National Press Club, not a serious response to this national emergency.

But the big lie—or the untruth, because I'm not allowed to tell the truth and call the Prime Minister a liar, of course, under the standing orders—is his line: 'It's COVID. It's a one-in-100-year pandemic.' Well, yes, sure it is a pandemic. But he was warned. He was told about this outbreak. He knew it would happen. He was told there'd be more strains. He didn't order the rapid antigen tests like every other developed country did. Their governments secured supplies, but not this bloke. He wanted to leave it to Harvey Norman and the private sector to make a profit instead of buying them with taxpayer funds for a lower rate and giving them to the community. Shame on him! But, really, it comes after a decade of neglect. That is the big lie. It didn't just creep up on him. It's not like someone yelled, 'Surprise, there's an aged-care crisis!' He's in his ninth year of government—nearly a decade of failure and neglect. The one common thread through all of this is the Prime Minister himself. He was the Minister for Social Services who presided over nearly $2 billion of cuts to aged care, he was the Treasurer who baked them into the budget, and now he's the Prime Minister. He broke it. He owns it.

Yes, of course, the pandemic has exacerbated and weakened the sector. But these problems are long-standing, and they're structural. The government has had 21 expert reports into this crisis. He then commissioned a royal commission, thinking he was going to lose the election and he'd kick it down the road to be Labor's fault. There were 148 recommendations, and he hasn't responded to over half of them or he has made an inadequate response. There's no 24/7 nurse on call in a nursing home, nothing for workers' wages—and $3.2 billion has been given to providers, with no strings attached. Shame on him. He should sack the minister and then sack himself.

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