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

It is tragic that the Labor Party takes to playing such base politics with what is a really tragic issue: 462 deaths in this country so far. Unfortunately, because of the infection rates, there will be more. As the Leader of the Government in the Senate has said, there are correlations with the level of community spread. As the government has said, and as many experts have acknowledged, there is a correlation between the level of community spread—the level of infection in the community—and the level of infection that will occur in residential aged care. If we want to overlay the statistics there is a direct correlation.

Unfortunately, in Victoria we had the situation where we got to the circumstance of over 700 infections every day. And, unfortunately, some of those people who were infected in the community were working in residential aged care, and the only way we can completely protect residential aged care from that community transmission is to completely isolate. That's not been done anywhere in the world. But when we consider that 97 per cent of the facilities in this country have not had a case of COVID-19 which has infected a resident, that demonstrates that a large number of aged-care providers in this country have been well prepared—a large number of them. There are a few—about 20-odd—that, tragically, have had significant infections. And, as was put to me by one of the clinical experts in infection control and infectious diseases, by the time the first case of infection is discovered the infection has largely occurred.

So it's a very tragic circumstance. I have issued my condolences on a number of occasions to all the families who are involved for their extremely tragic loss. Every single death is a tragedy—in fact, I wish that every case in this country had never occurred. But we're living in a global pandemic and governments at all levels are struggling with this. We continue to work every day to ensure that we provide the resources and the capacity to protect senior Australians in residential aged care, and we'll continue to do that.

The Labor Party can misrepresent my words and my actions in any way they like; it's not going to change the facts. This government set out its plan for dealing with COVID-19 very early in the outbreak. We started working with the sector extremely early. We did act, and we continue to work with the sector to improve the capacity to provide them with additional resources. In fact, over $1.5 billion of resources have been supplied to this sector to ensure that it has the resources available and the capacity to assist us to work with them to look after the residents in residential aged care in this country.

I reject the base politics that Labor is attempting to play with this. Every single death is an absolute tragedy. And I know, from the health professionals at the AHPPC and the CDNA right down through all members of the government, that they have been working every day to ensure that Australians more broadly as well as Australians who are residing in aged care have the best chance, have the best level of resources available, so that we can continue to protect them. The Labor Party scoff at our national performance, but on a global scale we have as a country performed extremely well. You only need to look at our capacity and the level of COVID-19 in this country. I have to say, I would rather be here in this country than in almost any other country in the world. In respect of residential aged care, it's the same: in the UK , over 20,000 deaths, each one of them a tragedy, as all of the 462 in this country are a tragedy— (Time expired)