Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) 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 Labor senators today relating to COVID-19 in aged care.

Today in question time we had a full display of the inadequate performance of this government and this minister on aged care. Four hundred and fifty-seven older Australians have passed away, with more than 400 of those in the last six weeks alone. Thousands of aged-care residents have contracted the virus, hundreds have been evacuated from their homes, often dehydrated, malnourished and soiled. The system is so fragile that the Defence Force had to be called in to help provide basic care to older Australians because the system couldn't do it without their help.

The criticism we have of this government and this minister is not that they didn't stop COVID-19. Our criticism and the questions we asked today to hold this minister to account are on where they failed to plan properly. Once COVID-19 got into aged-care facilities, they failed to prevent the spread. They knew older Australians were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, they knew the aged-care system and the residential aged-care system were broken and they knew the workforce was fragile. It's casualised, and workers work across multiple sites. They knew community transmission was rising in June, yet it took until late July for the Commonwealth to pull together the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre. They knew that personal and clinical care would be one of the first areas where care of residents would be impacted. They knew PPE was short back in May when 1,350 aged-care providers requested PPE from them. Surely that would have set off an alarm bell that maybe the sector wasn't as prepared as they had thought it was.

Earlier today, we found out that 33 more older Australians who had resided in residential aged care had passed away, and the Commonwealth didn't even know. The government that funds and regulates a system of care for older Australians in this country didn't even know. Can you imagine that happening in any other system where care is provided? Can you imagine it happening in the childcare system—where you just wouldn't know what was happening to the children who were using your services?

It would seem to me that tracking the number of people who had passed away from COVID-19 in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years would be a pretty basic and fundamental element of any pandemic planning exercise. I would have assumed that right from the get-go the government that regulates and funds the sector would want to know some basic information like how many people were contracting the virus and how many people were passing away from it. But it seems it wasn't until August that they put in place a system to audit that. Six months in, they start thinking, 'Actually, we'd better make sure that some of these numbers of people who have passed away actually add up.' This minister's failure in his portfolio of aged care is real. It's a failure to lead, a failure to reform, a failure to prepare, a failure to protect and a failure to plan. But, most of all, it's a failure to properly care for vulnerable Australians, who deserved better.

We hear a lot from the minister in question time of the government trying to play catch-up. They've been trying to spin their way out: 'We've got more money going here and more money going there.' But the facts won't change. The minister knew the sector was vulnerable when he took on this job in May last year. I have no doubt that his incoming brief provided him with information that said: 'This sector is vulnerable. Not only is the sector caring for vulnerable Australians but there is a whole range of issues about how the system runs that makes it vulnerable.' Then the royal commission was called. Surely that would have set off alarms in the minister's head. He gets reports from his department. He knows, and that it our issue today, and that is our issue with his performance: he knew in May last year how vulnerable the sector was. The reports from the Northern Hemisphere were shocking. Yet we see them playing catch-up today, six months in, and nearly 500 people have paid the price for that failure to plan and protect. (Time expired)