Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by Senator Colbeck in response to questions asked by myself, Senator Sheldon and Senator Gallagher about aged care.

There might be some fans in this chamber of that great British comedy Yes Minister. They might remember that episode, 'The Compassionate Society', where Minister Jim Hacker found out that his government had been funding for 15 months a hospital that had admitted no patients. Today in the Australian Senate we had our own version, where the Minister for Aged Care, Richard Colbeck, admitted that his government had been funding, for eight months, a residential aged-care facility that had not admitted one resident. I have to say that the British show was funny. This would be funny if the consequences weren't so tragic. Quite frankly, taxpayers have paid more than half a million dollars for a 40-bed facility where no-one is in any of the 40 beds! That's right: in the middle of a global health pandemic, where we have had 673 people die in residential aged-care facilities, this government decided it's a good use of taxpayer funds to spend half a million dollars on a residential age-care facility that has no residents.

Jim Hacker, that minister of Yes Minister was a fictional, a fiction character—