Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This really matters. The percentage of lives lost—very tragically of course—among those in residential aged care in Australia is 0.18 per cent. All losses of lives are tragic, and nobody resiles from that, but at 0.18 per cent of the residential aged-care population—remember that these are people who are fragile. Many of them are in residential aged care to help them through a palliative processes. Many of them are complex cases, managing a number of illnesses, many of which have the potential, themselves, to end life. None of this is to dismiss the seriousness of COVID-19, of course, but it is to acknowledge the fact that the challenge presented by managing deaths in the residential aged-care context is different to managing it in the broader community.

We're at 0.18 per cent. Let's compare that to Canada. For the same circumstances—residential aged-care residents—their rate is 1.5 per cent. That's six times the Australian rate. Let's go to France as a comparison. There, the equivalent figure is 2.4 per cent: 2.4 of their residential aged-care population have passed away. That is 1,300 per cent of the Australian figure.