Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Senate to:

(1) note:

(a) Aged care is in crisis, and as at 23 August 2020:

(i) 1,745 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in aged care facilities.

(ii) 313 aged care residents have died

(b) Evidence to the Aged Care Royal Commission that Australia has "one of the highest rates in the world of residential aged care deaths as a proportion of deaths from COVID-19".

(c) The Federal Government is in charge of aged care, it regulates aged care, it funds aged care, it has the legislation that determines the quality of aged care older Australians receive, and its own document on the health responses to COVID-19 in February clearly stated that it would be responsible for residential aged care facilities.

(d) The Morrison government has failed to plan to protect older Australians in aged care during the coronavirus pandemic, leading to unnecessary deaths.

(e) Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Morrison government had been warned of widespread neglect in its aged care system.

(f) The Morrison Government has let down hundreds of thousands of aged care residents and workers.

(2) express its sympathy to the families of all those residents of aged care who have died as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

(3) call on the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, and Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Senator Colbeck, to demonstrate leadership, stop seeking to deflect blame, take responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in aged care.

In rising to speak, I wish to place on record my condolences to the families who are grieving. I also want to say that I am thinking of those who struggle today with this horrible disease, and I offer my support and solidarity to their families. The horror of COVID-19 has been made manifest inside Australia's aged-care facilities. Older Australians have died alone, before their time and without loved ones. Staff have faced illness without the safety of protective equipment. Families have lost the chance to say goodbye.

The Prime Minister cannot control a pandemic or a global economic downturn, but he and his government are responsible for the federally funded aged-care sector, and more should have been done. The neglect and negligence we have seen through the COVID-19 period is a continuation of the neglect and negligence that has been brought to the fore through the proceedings of the aged-care royal commission. Older Australians deserve better than this. The government has squandered three terms worth of opportunities to fix the aged-care sector. The problems have been known for some time. There have been countless reports over the last six years, most of which have been ignored. The failure to act on these recommendations has helped exacerbate the current situation. I note, Madam Acting Deputy President Fierravanti-Wells, that you made a damning submission to the aged-care royal commission, stating:

The failure of the Abbott government to act at that critical time—

in 2014—

sowed the seeds of the predicament that the aged care sector is facing today.

You went on to say:

In short, Prime Minister Abbott and those advising him in the Coalition failed in their promise to reform aged care and simply opted for a shift that had no demonstrable positive outcome for the wellbeing of our older Australians.

It's a very clear statement of the problem. Moving the deckchairs didn't help at all. She's not alone in thinking that this is so. The commissioners presiding over the aged-care royal commission said today:

Had the Australian government acted on 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.

During question time today, the minister for aged care, Senator Colbeck, said that he didn't seek to draw a connection between the failure to act on previous reviews and the problems being experienced now. I think he should explain what he means by that. Is the minister seriously suggesting that there is no link? What does that mean for the observations being made by the commissioners that preside over the aged-care royal commission? Is he rejecting the conclusions of the commissioners—commissioners tasked, by his own account, with sorting through the challenges in the sector.

The failure to act on problems in this sector is not just historical. It has continued into the COVID period. Since Mr Morrison has become Prime Minister, another report has been delivered, a report by Professor Pollaers, the chair of the government's Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce. That has been sitting on the minister's desk for two years. It has 14 recommendations. Only one of those has been implemented and that one only partially. All the government has done is establish a committee. Lethargy, indifference and a failure to learn from the mistakes of the past have characterised the government's approach to the aged-care sector during COVID. It took until last Friday—six months into the pandemic—after hundreds of aged-care residents died—for the government to announce an aged-care advisory group.

This is a clear failure to plan. Counsel assisting the aged-care royal commission said that neither the Commonwealth department of health nor the aged-care regulator developed a COVID-19 plan specifically for the aged-care sector. It's incredible. It is incredible that such a plan would not have been developed, when everybody knew from the very beginnings of the outbreak of this pandemic that older people were the most vulnerable and the most likely to face mortality.

The report from Newmarch House was released today. Issue after issue identified in that report as contributing to the tragic outbreak at Newmarch House was not addressed by the Morrison government in the critical weeks before COVID-19 hit Victorian aged-care homes. For example, the report notes the impact of severely depleted staffing because of COVID-19 infections among staff—and quarantine—and the significant challenge this posed to Newmarch House. Despite this, the PM and the minister for aged care have continued to say that this issue could not have been anticipated in Victoria.

But it could have been anticipated, because we'd seen it once before in New South Wales. The royal commission was told that Dorothy Henderson Lodge lost almost its entire workforce within the first 48 hours. Within a week of the outbreak at Newmarch House, it had lost 87 per cent of its existing workforce. The report on Newmarch House calls for an expansion of surge capacities. But just last week it was revealed that even now the Morrison government has only spent half the funding it committed to addressing that problem. The report also notes that infection prevention and control was a significant concern, but in the critical weeks before the Victorian outbreak the Morrison government did no audit of nursing home stock of PPE, despite more than 1,300 providers requesting access to the National Medical Stockpile.

Of course, these failures have had a cost. The minister for aged care may not have remembered the number of people who have died in aged-care facilities from COVID-19. But the families and loved ones of those 313 older Australians will. Older Australians have borne the majority of the health consequences of this virus. Australia is recording one of the highest rates in the world of residential aged-care deaths as a proportion of deaths from the coronavirus. Almost 2,000 cases have been recorded in facilities. Staff have been left to work in understaffed and under-resourced Melbourne aged-care facilities. One doctor said:

Tonight, I worked with three nurses who were all in tears at one stage or another … At times, we're significantly distressed and exasperated at the circumstances in which we've found ourselves, where we are unable to provide the optimal care that we sought for a multitude of reasons.

The Prime Minister's failure to take responsibility, to acknowledge the role of his government in resolving this problem and to provide the answers the public deserves has simply compounded the hurt.

As one grieving son told The Guardian newspaper:

I'm not grieving because an 84-year-old woman died, necessarily. It's painful, we miss our mum, but we have been in pain for years … For us, it was painful because there are no answers.

The Prime Minister needs to provide answers to these families. But, more importantly, he needs to take urgent steps to ensure that unnecessary deaths, unnecessary illness and unnecessary anxiety and stress for families of people with loved ones in aged care do not occur again. Australians who have tragically been let down by Mr Morrison and his minister for aged care deserve no less. The public needs to know that Mr Morrison has learnt from previous outbreaks and everything possible is now being done. Former US Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey. once said:

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick …