Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

These bills appropriate around $16 billion in 2021-2022—$11.9 billion in Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2021-2022 and $4 billion in Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2021-2022. The bills are aimed at providing for the ordinary course of the provision of government services. The Labor Party doesn't block supply in the Australian parliament, and that's why these bills will go through. But the Australian economy is in a parlous state at the moment. The budget deficit is the largest in the nation's history. Debt will get close to $1 trillion over the course of the next decade because of this government's decisions. Productivity is in crisis in Australia. We're not generating as much income per person as we used to. We're now facing the prospect of inflation, and we have skills shortages in almost all industries across the country. The number of people undertaking training, particularly through apprenticeships and traineeships, is falling under this government, and the manifest skills shortages are related to the lack of investment in training and skills.

The chickens are coming home to roost for this government's poor economic management. But it's not only their poor economic management that is a factor in the anger that we're seeing around the country in relation to the Morrison government; it's their mismanagement of the healthcare crisis and the aged-care crisis, particularly over the last six months. The government's incompetence has been on display, particularly in relation to its handling of the recent omicron COVID outbreak. Their 'she'll be right' attitude has led to crisis in health care and aged care, which has affected almost all Australians over the course of the last six months.

In health care, it's now evident that the Morrison government was woefully ill-prepared for the outbreak of the omicron variant in Australia. It's not like they didn't have ample warning. We knew the outbreak was coming to Australia. Epidemiologists and health experts were saying it wouldn't be stopped at the border. We saw the outbreak in South Africa and how it swamped their healthcare system. We knew that it was much more contagious than the delta variant, so Australia had ample warning.

The Prime Minister and the government were warned back in October last year, by health officials and by a parliamentary committee which made recommendations around Australia's preparedness, that it would hit Australia, that it would be more contagious and that it would put enormous pressure on our healthcare system, particularly our hospital system. They recommended that rapid antigen tests be the preferred method of testing people for COVID, yet the government, we now know, did not get out ahead of it and order enough rapid antigen tests to cater for the wave that was coming. Basically the government ignored the advice that they were given around preparedness for the omicron outbreak.

The Prime Minister, rather foolishly, supported state premiers who were 'letting it rip' and opening up too quickly. A classic example of that was in New South Wales. The Premier, Dom Perrottet, got to December and wanted the political advantage of being able to say to people, 'We're now free; we're opening up for Christmas and the summer period,' and let it rip. They basically removed all restrictions. Masks were gone. Checking in was gone. Person limits indoors were gone. Everything was open. You could go to nightclubs and everything. It was all done in one go. Despite the fact that we knew what was coming from South Africa, they still made that decision, backed by the Prime Minister. Never forget that the Prime Minister came out and backed the New South Wales Premier, saying that he was making the right decision and it was time to release Australians from those restrictions.

We now all know what happened. Omicron spread like wildfire. It hit and it became rampant. Our testing facilities simply couldn't cope. We had these outrageous scenes of people lining up, with their kids, in cars for five or six hours to get tested, only to get to the front of the queue and be told that the facility had closed and they had to go away and try again the next day. I'll never forget the phone calls and emails from constituents—red-hot anger with the government about their mishandling of testing and their response to omicron.

Then the Prime Minister developed policy on the run, saying to people: 'If you've got symptoms, you don't need to worry about going to get a PCR test anymore; you can get a rapid antigen test.' They changed the rules quite quickly, and that just confused people. It went against everything that governments and health experts had been saying about the importance of getting PCR tests. They said now, 'You should go and get rapid antigen tests.' But there was one problem: you couldn't get them. You couldn't buy them anywhere, come hell or high water. They were rare as hen's teeth. I remember visiting a few pharmacies over that period when the demand for rapid antigen tests was through the roof. You would walk into a pharmacy and all you would hear was the phone ringing—the phone ringing constantly—and those pharmacists having to pick up the phone and say, 'No, we don't have any; try again in a week,' and not being able to do their ordinary jobs. That was a symptom of ill-preparedness.

We had this quick spike in cases that put pressure on our healthcare system, particularly our hospitals. I spoke to a couple of ICU nurses who work at the Prince of Wales Hospital. They were literally run off their feet. They were worried about their patients and about the capacity of the healthcare system, because you had other ICU nurses either getting COVID or being close contacts and being out of action for a week. That meant that the ICUs were understaffed, and the hospital administrations were bringing in nurses from other areas who weren't trained or specialised in the ICU. One of those nurses said to me: 'It's useless. It's basically like asking you to come and work as a nurse in the ICU. If you haven't been trained in that area, and you don't know how to operate the equipment and you don't know the procedures and protocols, you're basically just getting in the way.' That is what was occurring. That is unforgivable, because that's risking the health and safety of the Australian public.

Is it any wonder that nurses went on strike in Sydney yesterday in their thousands? They are fed up. They have had enough of the Morrison government and the Perrottet government being ill-prepared to plan for COVID, to support the healthcare system and to support our frontline workers during this difficult time. I want to make it clear that I support our nurses. I supported them taking industrial action yesterday. I support their claims for ratios and fair pay, because they deserve it, as do other healthcare workers and other frontline staff who have been working around the clock to keep our country going.

The aged-care sector was in crisis prior to omicron; but omicron has made acutely visible all of the problems that we have in our aged-care sector, and it's now at breaking point. There's a staffing crisis in aged care that has now been uncovered. It's been there for a long time, but it's now been uncovered for all to see. For years aged-care staff have been overworked and underpaid, with many of them having to work two jobs—because they've been put on as casuals—just to try and make ends meet. They're working extra shifts and having to work in other jobs just to feed their families. When they raised these concerns prior to COVID, what was the government's response? They didn't care. This government didn't care. They didn't back workers. When are they going to back workers and their union? When the aged-care cases came before the Fair Work Commission, do you think the Morrison government or the Turnbull government or the Abbott government ever intervened to say, 'Yes, these workers deserve better pay and better conditions?' Of course not. They opposed them. They opposed those Fair Work claims, those work-value claims in the Fair Work Commission. Then, when omicron hits and staff or their close contacts get sick, what happens? You get shortages, you get elderly residents being locked in their rooms without the basic care that they deserve, and the crisis in the system is uncovered.

In one case I was contacted by a constituent in our area about an aged-care facility in our community that requested that visitors pay $11 just to visit their relatives. I want to read this e-mail from Alan in my electorate. It says: 'We received this e-mail from the aged-care facility that our very close friend is at in Little Bay. They are asking that we pay $11 every time we wish to visit her. She has no family. My wife and I are the closest thing that she has, and we've known her for 68 years. We're both pensioners, and the cost of this will severely limit our ability to be able to visit her regularly. We feel that it's outrageous to ask this amount of people who are the only contact to the outside world for these people in care.' That's what our healthcare system has come to under this government—asking relatives and close friends to pay to go and visit their loved ones! That is an absolute disgrace.

Now you've got the government attempting to bribe aged-care workers with two $400 retention payments. Well, guess what? It's too little, too late. Why weren't you supporting their Fair Work claims, their work-value cases, when they were moving these amendments in the Fair Work Commission years ago? Why weren't you out there supporting aged-care workers when they were saying to you years ago, before COVID hit, that the system was in crisis? The government pay lip-service to workers in the aged-care sector, and now all Australians are suffering because of it.

The measure of a country is how well you look after your most vulnerable citizens, particularly the poor and the elderly. Australia used to take pride in the fact that we had a very strong healthcare system, underpinned by Medicare and universal access, and an aged-care system that ensured that all had access to decent care. But now Australians are starting to ask themselves: what happened to that wonderful healthcare system that we built through Medicare, and what happened to the care that we used to show for Australians who are vulnerable in their elderly years? It's been undermined by this government. It's been destroyed by this government, and its about time that Australians saw writ large what has been occurring not only in economic management but in our healthcare system and our aged-care system. Hopefully they will say, come the election: It's now time for a change. It's now time to put back in place the policies that ensure we look after our most vulnerable through health care and aged care.

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