Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Why did fewer than one in five aged-care workers complete the government's online training module about the use of protection equipment by June?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The advice that I have is, as of 7 am on 24 August 2020, 1.155 million individuals have completed online infection control training procedures. That includes 1.2 million modules in aged care, 165,192 aged-care workers, 84,493 disability care workers, 120,565 hospital workers, 64,531 primary care workers and 720,855 others. Most significantly, there are 11 different infection modules which have been set up in relation to aged care: personal safety, families and visitors in residential care, families and visitors in home care, COVID-19 in aged care, outbreak management procedures, personal protective equipment, laundry, cleaning, suspected identification of COVID-19, supporting older Australians in residential care, and supporting older Australians in home care. Between them, as I say, 1.2 million different modules have been conducted right across the country. That is part of what we set up with our surge workforce preparation announced on 11 March. It's part of what we built on on 13 March with a national public hospitals agreement, where we agreed to provide 50 per cent of the funding incurred by state hospitals in relation to their COVID-19 preparation and their outreach.

It's also related to what we did with our work on 31 March, where we announced, in particular, the private hospitals agreement, which has seen 452 patients, on the advice that I have, transferred to those private hospitals and then, in addition to that, supported by the national testing contract, which allows for every resident and every staff member to be tested; as well as 69 million masks, and gloves and gowns and goggles distributed across the country, and 14 million in aged care.

All of these things, in context, occur in a world where we have a pandemic where 24 million people have been infected as of today. By the time we come back on Monday, it's likely that that will have increased to 25 million people. It's likely that, as a consequence, 24,000 to 25,000 lives will have been lost. Around the world, we have a global pandemic. In Australia, what we have managed to do, in seven out of eight states and territories, is to keep that pandemic at bay. In Victoria, where there is a mass community outbreak which has seen 95 per cent of the case growth, we've managed to fight so much of that off in the aged-care facilities, but we are going to continue that fight each day and every day to save every life we can. (Time expired)