Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck)to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to COVID-19 in aged care.

I've got a mum who's 90 years old. She had a birthday on 8 August. Thankfully, she's in relatively good health, considering her age, and she lives independently, because I'm telling you I would move hell and high water if she had to go into an aged-care facility. I would not be having that, because I do not have any confidence in what the government do in aged care. And it's not just in relation to COVID-19, as bad as that has been, as embarrassing as that has been, and as much as that has shown what a lazy government we have and that they don't actually have any respect for our elders. They don't care. They don't care about what happens to older Australians. Aged care isn't even in cabinet. Cabinet hasn't even been briefed. As far as I'm concerned, that tells us a whole lot about what this government thinks and how they treat elderly Australians.

I don't trust that this minister has the competence to manage the COVID-19 outbreak, let alone the competence to run the system more generally. This is a minister who can't answer basic questions about COVID-19 outbreaks in aged care. He couldn't tell the COVID-19 Senate committee how many people had died in aged care, and he stumbled over this figure when responding to me in question time on Monday. He couldn't say whether he had briefed the federal cabinet on the interim report of the aged-care royal commission. Yesterday he scurried from the Senate while Labor senators responded to his weak defence of the government's record on aged care. Today, he couldn't tell us how much of the $205 million committed in May for staffing, training and PPE was actually spent on those items. He couldn't tell us what conditions were imposed on the spending of that money.

This is not a minister that is on top of his game. This is the most critical issue for Australia in the last 100 years. It's not like it's just a little one-off episode where someone caught a disease. This is affecting the whole of the nation of Australia. It has put people out of work. It has stopped children going to school. It has put cities and regions into lockdown. He is the minister responsible for aged care and he can't answer these basic questions. I will tell you what we can do. Earlier today, Mr Albanese gave a speech at the National Press Club.