Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Walsh for the question. Senator Walsh is correct: we have made a specific decision as a government to provide support to residential aged-care workers—and some of those who are working in home-care services—to support them and, as a government, to indicate to them that they are important to us and to the community and we want them to continue to come to work, because, in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, we found that there were some, particularly, residential aged-care workers who said that they did not want to come to work, particularly in the circumstance where there was a COVID outbreak within the residential aged-care facility that they were working in.

One thing that we didn't say is that the bonuses would be tax free, because they're not, and that's not how these sorts of income bonuses work. We said 'up to $800'—and 'up to $600'—each quarter. Sixteen hundred dollars additional income to workers in residential aged care is a significant amount of money. We always said, in our statements, 'up to', and it was $600, so $1,200, into home-care services. We never said at any point in time that these support bonuses would be tax free. That was never said. We are quite proud of the fact that we continue to support residential aged-care workers and home-care workers as a part of our response to the COVID-19 process.