Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The health department says 328 aged-care residents have died from COVID-19. How many more aged-care residents have to die before the Prime Minister accepts full responsibility for keeping them safe?

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

I thank the member for his question. I join with him, and I'm sure all members in this place, as we grieve the deaths of so many Australians who've succumbed to this virus, not just those who are older but all those who've either been affected with serious illness or ultimately succumbed to that virus.

The Commonwealth is responsible, as I set out in the statement the Leader of the Opposition referred to earlier, for all the issues that he referred to in his statement. I stand by that statement. The Commonwealth is responsible for the funding and the regulation of aged-care services in this country. But it is also true, in the course of a pandemic, that there are responsibilities that are held by other agencies of the federation—in particular, the state governments. So, when it comes to managing the crisis in aged care, we must work together with state governments, and that is exactly what we're doing. We are combining our responsibilities to together work to the plan that I set out, and that was set out by the government over many months and restored by its refreshing and its updating, based on the best available evidence.

We are working together with the Victorian government on that plan. We both have responsibilities here. The Commonwealth is responsible for aged-care facilities when it comes to their funding and their regulation and their clinical practices, and that is what we are overseeing. But we are working together with the state government of Victoria to ensure that on the broader public health issues, when you have a pandemic of the scale we've experienced in Victoria, the two systems work together to get the best result. We share those responsibilities. That's why I speak regularly with the Victorian Premier about these issues. That's why the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre is led by the Commonwealth and is staffed by representatives of both the state government and the federal government to ensure we get the best possible response, which involves the transfer of residents to public and private hospitals in Victoria. It involves visitation by the public health officers from the Victorian government and the notification of federal officials and federal agencies when testing has been done at those facilities. It is simplistic to seek to apply such a binary representation of this issue. This is a complex pandemic. The responsibilities are clear, and we will meet our responsibilities, and we will work with everyone in this country who wants to work with us.