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

I thank the senator for her question. I was very deliberate with what I said in my presentation to the Senate this morning. I have great respect for the processes of the Senate; it's an important process that we follow here. I have said—and the Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions—that there are some things we haven't got right. We've quoted the example of the time when we had 24 hours to find completely new staffing for St Basil's in Melbourne, where things didn't happen in the way that we had hoped that they might. So we've been very open with respect to those things.

I have acknowledged in this place a number of times this week—and I did it again this morning—that I should have had the mortality numbers with me last Friday when I appeared before the Senate committee. I've admitted and acknowledged that on a number of occasions, and I've apologised on a number of occasions—quite appropriately.

We've been very open about the circumstance in Victoria. We've continued to build the effort. We've continued to build our response to ensure that Victorians in aged care get the quality of care that they deserve. The proof of the pudding of that is in the results that we're seeing now in residential aged-care facilities, where we've actually improved the number of facilities that are on our red list from 13 a few weeks ago, when we established the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre, now to three. In my briefing this morning we only specifically had conversations about two of those. We continue to work in the interests of senior Australians, and that's exactly what we'll continue to do.