Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to thank all of our frontline healthcare and aged-care workers. The Newmarch House review, undertaken by Professor Gilbert, provides a clear example of the challenges faced by many aged-care facilities as they tried to contain the coronavirus outbreak. It also demonstrates the lack of planning and preparation, at all levels of government, for our healthcare system to face a pandemic. Simple things like casuals working across multiple facilities were missed as a key risk. Then there seems to have been a decision to block aged-care COVID patients from our hospitals, to set aside the intensive care unit beds, clearly, for younger, fitter Australians. It's time the state health systems told us why they discriminated against the aged. Our older Australians worked and paid their taxes for many decades, so why are they now treated as second-class citizens? Maybe the state and federal governments don't care about the aged as One Nation does.

The Morrison government have proven they are better at patching holes on the run than they are at forward planning and solutions. COVID-19 and the aged-care royal commission have proven this. We expect that all of our governments can and should work together, but they are all out for what they can get; that is quite clear. The result is that nobody is looking after our physical health, our mental health and our economic health. We have a state Premier in Queensland who has handed over running of the state to the Chief Health Officer. The Chief Health Officer has admitted that she has only one goal, which is to protect the physical health of Queenslanders. So our state is now being run into the ground, with no-one looking after economic health and mental health. That's abdication of a Premier; we're looking for a Premier in this state.

I remind the federal government of the low level of support provided to recipients of home-care packages. It's about time the minister and this government got their act together and respected older Australians. Both the Morrison government and the Queensland government need to step up and demonstrate leadership. They need to show us the data and the plan covering all aspects of managing our way out of this pandemic and the resulting recession and, in the process, ensuring the security of our aged Australians.

I'd like to continue by reiterating the comments of the President on Monday when he opened the Senate with a statement:

In the case of Tasmania the correspondence from the State Controller outlines consideration of exemption from the quarantine requirements on a case-by-case basis. This claimed discretion is particularly problematic on the grounds of differential treatment of members of the executive in the first instance and lack of transparency around the equality of treatment of senators in the second instance.

I echo those comments. I support the Senate President for saying that. What we've seen from state governments is a desire to control people, particularly in Queensland and Victoria. They hide the data—and the Prime Minister is guilty of this too. I wrote a letter to Premier Palaszczuk requesting the data on which she had built her plan for the state. In her reply she pointed to two sources. We checked both. There's no data justifying the plan she has put in place or the actions she has taken.

In comparison with Australia, in Taiwan they share their data with their people; they share their plans with the people. The leaders trust the people. They don't hide the data, and the people trust the leaders as a result. In the same time that in Australia we've had over 530 deaths from coronavirus, Taiwan has had seven. The figures get even more startling: they have a similar population to ours, 24 million versus our 25; they have a higher density population, so easier transmission of the disease; and they had earlier and closer exposure to the virus as a result of communist China being so near. What we've seen, though, is that by focusing on security and doing a good job Taiwan has isolated the sick and the vulnerable and allowed the rest of its people to go to work under conditions for which people take responsibility. That trust and that ability for people to be free to go about their work and leisure has resulted in Taiwan having an economy that has not hit a bump at all and that is thriving. What we need to do in Australia is start sharing data from the people with the people, not hide data from the people, and provide solid leaders that the people can trust.