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

I join with the Leader of the Opposition in welcoming the member for Eden-Monaro, and, to her family, I welcome you also here to this place today.

Today, like the rest of our country, our parliament meets with rules and restrictions and innovations that were unthinkable months ago. It's important we meet to assert our hope for the future; to take further action needed to protect the lives and livelihoods of Australians; to affirm that, whatever we face as a nation, our parliamentary democracy will function; and to demonstrate our shared commitment across this chamber to the welfare of the Australian people.

COVID-19, a highly contagious, relentless virus unlike anything we have seen in roughly a century, has taken a terrible toll since we last met here in this place. Around the world there have been over 23 million confirmed cases and more than 800,000 confirmed fatalities from COVID-19, but we know the figure is likely far higher than that. In Australia, there have now been almost 25,000 cases of COVID-19 and, very sadly, more than 500 deaths. More than 400 of those were in Victoria alone. This is a heavy toll.

Millions of Victorians are now enduring a winter of isolation, anxiety and, all too often, terrible personal loss. But, while they are isolated, Mr Speaker, we gather to say to your fellow Victorians, 'You are not alone.' We've deployed more than 1,700 Defence Force personnel to assist on the ground in Victoria. A further 1,780 ADF personnel were deployed right across our nation as part of Operation COVID-19 ASSIST. We've sent hundreds of Commonwealth officials and other public health experts to Victoria. Together they are leading efforts to support aged-care facilities, support testing and tracing, help out with control points, doorknock and assist with planning and logistical tasks.

We've also injected, on top of other supports, an extra $33 million to the Victorian childcare sector to secure places for families, to protect jobs in the sector and to keep these centres viable. We have made supporting the mental health of Victorians a priority, especially young Victorians, who are finishing school or are at university or are out of work and are concerned about their futures. There is a further $50 million package of support that is now underway. I'm pleased other states and territories have also stepped up. I thank the premiers and chief ministers of those states and territories for their prompt assistance, sending nurses, testing and tracing support and other help to our friends in Victoria.

Despite our many challenges, especially in Victoria, we can take heart from the unswerving commitment of so many Australians from all walks of life waging this daily war to suppress and ultimately defeat this virus. Nurses, doctors, careworkers, other frontline health professionals, cleaners, truck drivers, police officers, farmers, shearers and retail staff are all keeping our country running. I also thank public servants, including health officials, border officers and other armies of staff processing benefit payments to give their fellow Australians support and hope.

Each day and all day we make decisions and we take actions necessary to keep Australians safe. We do so in an environment unprecedented in our lifetimes. We do not claim infallibility. We do not pretend to perfect information, foresight or results in this pandemic, nor do we deny the high expectations that are rightly set for us by Australians. But we openly acknowledge the honest truth that on some days the virus does and will get the better of us, and we fall short—not a unique experience in Australia in these times. On those days we have asked for patience and understanding, and I have been overwhelmed by the encouragement received from a generous Australian people, who quietly understand the challenges and difficulties of these times. I am thankful to all of them for their messages of support—indeed, for their prayers—from the youngest to the most senior in our communities.

All who are engaged in this great effort in government are giving it their all, whether they be prime ministers, premiers or ministers making decisions, or public officials giving the best advice they possibly can in a constantly changing and challenging environment. Our efforts seek to match those being made by the Australian people, impacted by these twin crises of the pandemic and the recession. On those days when our efforts fall short, none are more sorry than I as Prime Minister. We do not let those days, however, dampen our hope, nor distract nor discourage us from the task that remains at hand. We learn from those days, we lift our heads and we get back at it the next morning, and each and every day. That is why our nation, Australia, has done better and continues to do better than most of the developed nations in the world today. The United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Ireland and Israel are all experiencing case and fatality rates well in excess of Australia—in some cases, more than 30 times per head of population.

Importantly, we maintain a strident hope for the future as recent days of disappointment are once again beginning to turn in our nation's favour. In seven states and territories, we have continued to be highly successful in suppressing community transmission, especially in New South Wales. In Victoria we have turned the corner once again. The daily sacrifices and efforts of Victorians are making a difference each and every day.

Australia will only succeed when Victoria succeeds as well. Yet the outbreak in Victoria, a re-emergence in countries like New Zealand and second waves across Europe, the United States and Asia, including Japan, have clearly shown that this virus is patient and continues to stalk. It's an enemy that will continue to probe for weakness. To live alongside this virus, reopen our economies, bring down our internal borders and return our lives to as normal as possible, we must keep to the staples of successful containment and suppression of the virus: strong international border protection and quarantine measures; rigorous testing and tracing capabilities; an ability to respond decisively to localised outbreaks and isolate hotspots appropriately defined without shutting down our economy; and consistent hygiene and social distancing behaviours, including wearing a mask when required and, if you're sick, staying at home and getting tested.

We must also continue to focus on protecting the most vulnerable, and we are doing so. Sadly, there have been 335 deaths in residential and in-home aged care, where loved ones have succumbed to the virus in Australia. Once again, we send our sincere sympathies and condolences to the families of all those who have been bereaved in this way.

There are 2,706 residential aged-care facilities in Australia. In 97 per cent of these facilities, there have been no infections among residents. This compares sharply to many countries around the world, such as the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain. In Victoria, where there have been high levels of community transmission, 126 of the 766 residential aged-care facilities have outbreaks amongst residents and staff. Of those facilities that have experienced infections across Australia, the impact has been significant in 16 cases, and in four cases the impact has been severe and completely unacceptable. Again, I offer my apologies to the residents and families of those affected in those facilities. It was not good enough. Investigations and reviews are underway, as is appropriate, including by the royal commission into aged care that I established. As of this morning, the number of significantly impacted facilities has been reduced to three. The situation in these facilities remains fragile, I'm advised, as of early this morning, but stable.

We will continue on with the task, having so far committed more than a billion dollars in aged-care supports. We will continue working to address the many challenging issues in aged care, from waste management to infection control, staff support and communications with families. The issues are many. We are learning and applying the lessons of our experiences. We are continually updating our plans and working with our partners the state and territory health systems and aged-care providers, such as through the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre. We're on the ground, not just in Victoria but across other states and territories, bolstering preparedness and putting in place even stronger arrangements in the event that our response needs to be scaled up to counter any new threat that presents.

We are also facing a concurrent economic crisis, as I've reminded the House on many occasions, as a result of this pandemic. Between February and May more than two million Australians either lost their jobs or saw their hours reduced. The national measured unemployment rate is now expected to peak at close to 10 per cent in the December quarter of this year. But the effective unemployment rate is expected to reach over 13 per cent. Our job is to protect jobs. Wherever we can get as many Australians back into jobs as possible, we will. Wherever we can protect those jobs, we will. And we are making our way back. As the Treasurer has reminded us today, more than half of the 1.3 million Australians who had lost their jobs or been stood down to zero hours have found their way back into work. This is a great start.

Through our collective health and economic actions, we've avoided the scale of economic pain experienced elsewhere around the world. The decline in our economy at the start of the year in the March quarter was smaller than most of the developed world. Subsequent forecasts by the OECD and the IMF have suggested that Australia's economy will be less affected than almost any developed economy in the world. In the June quarter, we've already seen falls of around 10 per cent in the United States and Germany, 14 per cent in France and more than 20 per cent in the United Kingdom. We will receive our data for Australia's economic performance next week. Our contraction will be substantial and heartbreaking, of course, but we are confident it will be much lower than in the countries that I have mentioned.

Alleviating this pain, our government is providing an unprecedented level of economic support to Australians at more than $300 billion and more than 15.3 per cent of Australia's economy. It is support that is being updated and adapted as circumstances require. Last month we announced the extension of the JobKeeper program until the end of March—the single largest economic measure any Australian government has ever undertaken, at a cost of more than $100 billion alone. This week, we will legislate those changes. This will keep more businesses in business and more Australians in jobs. As well, last month we announced the extension of the JobSeeker coronavirus supplement until the end of 2020. Many other supports and reforms are being rolled out, as we both cushion the economic blow from COVID-19 and prepare the ground for economic recovery through the JobMaker plan I announced several months ago. They include the bringing forward of infrastructure investments; a major skills and training package, through JobTrainer, together with the states and territories; faster approval processes and further steps to reduce barriers to job creation and investment; and initiatives to lower gas and electricity prices to support, in particular, our manufacturers. We will have more to say on these issues as the Treasurer brings down the budget in October, when he will give further details on our JobMaker plan to take Australia out of the COVID-19 recession.

There's still a long road ahead when it comes to the COVID-19 crisis, but the key to a post-COVID world has always been a vaccine, and there is hope. Through our arrangements with AstraZeneca we are working towards securing a COVID-19 vaccine for 25 million Australians. The vaccine is being developed by the University of Oxford and is currently at an advanced stage of development. If trials prove successful, safe and effective, it could be available next year. We welcome that development. Every single Australian would be able to receive the vaccine for free, and it would be rolled out in accordance with expert medical advice. We're also in advanced discussions with other vaccine candidates, including our very own CSL-University of Queensland's 'molecular clamp' vaccine, amongst others. We are backing our brightest and best to find a vaccine. In total our government is investing $256 million in vaccine medical research.

In conclusion, early this year I said that, for many, this would be our toughest year ever. Sadly, this has proven true. But together we have also proven our strength. We are staring down this challenge right across the generations. Together we will see better days ahead. So today let us now claim the hope. Let's lay hold of that hope and press forward together, stronger and safer and always together.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition, on indulgence.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks very much, Mr Speaker. This pandemic continues to challenge the global community. It continues to challenge us as a nation and it challenges us as individuals. Australians have shown themselves to be the resilient, courageous, determined people that all of us in this chamber know them to be. They've followed instructions under hard conditions, particularly the conditions that Victorians are experiencing at the moment. We are indeed all in this together. Australians are certainly doing their bit, and I have never been as proud to be an Australian as I have been through this difficult time.

The job of an opposition leader and an opposition at times like these is to be constructive, just as it should have been during the global financial crisis. We have been constructive. We have put forward ideas in good faith and encouraged the government to get on board with those ideas. Where we think the government has got it right, we have said so and praised the government for doing so. But it's also the job of the opposition in a democracy to call things as they see them. It's the job of the opposition to hold a government to account, to make sure that each and every day the outcome is as good as it can be. To do otherwise is not to be responsible. To do otherwise is to abandon the democratic principles that are the fundamental difference between us and other regimes around the world.

There are no areas that have been more critical for this than the area of aged care. The fact is that, whilst throughout the country there are some 517 people, at least, who have lost loved ones during the crisis, some 328 of them were aged-care residents and another seven were in supported home care. Every one of those Australians is valued. It's a source of heartache. My sincere condolences go to all the families and friends who have lost loved ones during this pandemic. Too many of them have had to farewell those loved ones over FaceTime. Too many aged-care workers have had to hold the hands of older Australians as they pass—older Australians who helped make this great country what it is today, older Australians who are deserving of our respect and our support, older Australians who are entitled to dignity in their later years. Aged-care residents are vulnerable. They depend on the dedicated nurses, carers and staff in facilities. I pay tribute to every one of those workers putting themselves at risk in order to provide support to these vulnerable Australians.

Aged-care residents also depend upon the federal government, because it's the federal government that funds and regulates these facilities. Indeed, the Prime Minister told us so on 27 February—after question time was over, after a parliamentary week, on a Thursday afternoon in the parliamentary courtyard. He waved around a document that said: 'The Australian government will also be responsible for residential aged-care facilities. They will be responsible for establishing and maintaining infection control guidelines, healthcare safety and quality standards.' But we know that no plan was put in place. We know this from the royal commission opening statement by the counsel assisting, who said:

… the evidence will reveal that neither the Commonwealth Department of Health nor the aged care regulator developed COVID-19 plan specifically for the aged care sector.

The fact is that there wasn't a plan and there wasn't the action that was required. If actions speak louder than words then the Morrison government truly is 'the quiet Australian'. The fact is that this could also have been foreseen. We know from the statements. The Prime Minister said on 29 July that the complete withdrawal of the workforce was 'a new situation that had not been anticipated or foreshadowed at a state level or considered at a federal level'. In fact, a document issued by the federal health department on 29 June urged providers: 'Keep in mind that up to 80 to 100 per cent of the workforce may need to isolate in a major outbreak. There may be difficulty recruiting agency staff during an outbreak.'

But it wasn't just something predicting forward, because we know that it had happened. Going back to November last year, the royal commission released its interim report. The hint is in the title. It's called Neglect. That's the title of an interim report of a royal commission established by this government—Neglect. It described the system as 'cruel and harmful', 'shocking' and 'all too often unsafe and seemingly uncaring'. It found that up to half of the residents were malnourished. They were literally starving. Here, in a wealthy country like ours, almost half the aged-care residents were literally starving—that's what the royal commission found. It found that there were too few aged-care workers and they were paid too little. But also we know that that flowed through to what happened, tragically, at the Dorothy Henderson Lodge, where six residents died.

The report was given to the government in April. It was made public only because of the royal commission. It found issues with workforce and it found the problems that were there, consistent with the interim report of the royal commission. Then there was the Newmarch House report—17 deaths attributed directly to COVID. It found serious PPE shortages contributed to the outbreaks. We've heard firsthand stories of nurses and aged-care workers having to use just one glove rather than two. How do you lift a resident with one glove? The sort of pressure that these people were under. It found communications failures. This is back in March and April in New South Wales; warning bells were ringing but no-one was listening. On 10 June there was a phone hook-up with 120 people on the call, including the regulator, with people speaking up, crying out for support. That's outlined in such detail in The Saturday Paper of last week.

But for this government the buck never stops. No-one's responsible. The motto that was used last year, 'I don't hold a hose, mate', is a flexible one for all occasions. But it is very clear that this Prime Minister and this government are responsible for aged care, very clear. On 19 August the Prime Minister said:

… we regulate aged care, but when there is a public health pandemic … then they are things that are—

managed from Victoria. In the same statement he said:

… when there is a public health pandemic, then public health, which, whether it gets into aged care, shopping centres, schools or anywhere else, then they are things that are matters for Victoria.

There's a big difference between aged care and shopping centres. No-one's arguing that shopping centres are responsible, that there's a federal regulator or that they are federally funded—but aged care is, and that's why there needs to be responsibility.

It took until today, believe it or not, that there was a media release as a result of a decision just last Friday to finally set up an aged-care advisory group. That's a positive thing, but why did it take until now? And just today, the royal commissioners themselves—not a lawyer appearing before the royal commission, not a submission to the royal commission, but the royal commissioners themselves—said this:

Had the Australian Government acted upon previous reviews of aged care, the persistent problems in aged care would have been known much earlier and the suffering of many people could have been avoided.

There it is, the royal commissioners.

Last Friday we saw, frankly, a minister appear before the COVID-19 committee who's just not up to this task—just not up to it. I don't know what it takes to lose your job on the front bench of this government. Whether it's the minister for so-called emissions reductions—one of the great ironic titles of modern politics—or the Assistant Treasurer or the minister for aged care, there is nothing that any minister can do which is a dismissible offence. I would have thought that last Friday's performance underlined that.

So we are concerned, and it's legitimate. We have a responsibility to raise these issues, and we will be raising them in this parliament, as we should, this week. We'll also continue to be constructive about a range of issues. We put forward arguments—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

Can you withdraw? I ask that that be withdrawn.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn't hear what was said, but if a member or minister made an unparliamentary remark I'd like them to withdraw.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

You'll need to come to the dispatch box. Hansard needs to record it.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The fact is that we have put forward a range of ideas on the need for borders to be shut—not just to China—that eventually were adopted. We put forward issues about entry points, temperature testing and quarantining at airports for people who were arriving—eventually, some of those were adopted. We put forward extension and support to youth allowance and Austudy that was adopted. We put forward wage subsidies that became JobKeeper. That was originally opposed, but adopted. We put forward the need to support particular sectors, such as the arts—eventually adopted. We put forward the warning, very clearly, that a snapback in September would not work. The reason why we have to have legislation is that the government told us and the Australian people that all support could be withdrawn in September. We warned about the abuse of the superannuation scheme, and we now know that there hasn't been a single cheque, but $40 billion has been withdrawn on that basis. We put forward the need to support public and social housing and to have job creation, not just the so-called HomeBuilder scheme.

Above all, throughout this, we put forward a strong view that we needed to listen to the science. That's consistent with our view on other issues as well. We need to listen to the science, listen to the experts and follow that advice, and we'll continue to do so. We'll continue to put forward suggestions to the government. We are concerned about the early withdrawal of support—that it will result in a longer and deeper recession than there needs to be. We will continue to argue for support for measures such as job creation in social housing and other areas. We will continue to argue that, during the pandemic, no-one should be left behind and, during the recovery, no-one should be held back.

That's our firm view. We will hold the government to account over this fortnight. It is a good thing that parliament has now resumed. I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the President of the Senate for the foresight that you've shown in supporting the measures, which are flexible and which will enable there to be parliamentary sittings during this fortnight. That's our responsibility, because we have a responsibility to the Australian people to try to be as determined—to end where I started—as courageous and as committed as they are. They have shown that commitment. They deserve nothing less than us doing our absolute best to make sure that the deliberations of the parliament this fortnight produce outcomes that improve health outcomes but also alleviate some of the economic consequences of the necessary health action which has been taken.