Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do really want to believe Senator Fawcett, and perhaps, if he was representing the minister for health and he was managing the portfolio instead of the hapless Minister Colbeck, Australians might indeed have a degree of confidence. But what we've seen today in question time, in answers to questions from my colleagues Senator Walsh and Senator Gallagher, is once again this pattern of game-playing—playing with information in a game that is about people's lives. We saw the game-playing from this government and the false premise upon which they proceeded, and their failures to implement and deliver proper processes to protect Australians has cost hundreds of lives in Victoria.

As I stand and speak here as a senator for New South Wales, our state is going into another very challenging period, with potential lockdowns and, certainly, changes to our practices because this virus remains. Senator Colbeck, in his responses to questions from Senator Walsh, seemed to be very proud of these figures—that 33 per cent of aged-care workers have had their first dose. It's better than zero, but it's a long, long way from where it needs to be, and it's a huge distance from where this government promised Australians they would be. Only 15 per cent of the people who are working in aged care across Australia have had their second dose.

Now, I can only hope that, in New South Wales, the delta variant which is out in our community and causing so much concern doesn't end up in an aged-care worker in an aged-care setting, or we're in all sorts of problems. And the reason that we're in this situation is because this government isn't telling the truth—it isn't telling the truth to the Australian people; it isn't coming in here and telling the truth—and it isn't doing the work that needs to be done to provide the necessary protection for the Australian people. If you're in Sydney and you've got somebody going to the home of someone you love—a home-care worker—you want to be really hoping that, on the watch of this government that is responsible for rolling out the vaccine to home-care workers and aged-care workers, that delta variant doesn't get into that home-care situation, because only 4.3 per cent of all home-care workers have had their second dose. That's the bit of the job that this government was supposed to do. That's the bit of the job where the government stand up and say, 'Yes, we're responsible for that; we're responsible for aged care,' and they promised—they promised—they would do this job properly, but they didn't.

In response to a question from his own side today, Minister Colbeck pretended once again that they've accepted the aged-care royal commission recommendations. But that is at odds with what he said in response to a question from Senator Walsh, because, when she asked what was going on with the registration of people who are working across multiple sites, he had to tell the truth, and the truth is that the government rejected the recommendation to set up a system to monitor who is working where—just like they didn't know who was vaccinated amongst aged-care workers. They've got no idea how many people are working across what sites. And then he faffed on for ages, trying to pretend that they've got some system in place. 'It is required,' he said. 'We are doing consultations. We are going to use'—notice the future tense, not even the present tense and certainly not the past tense; they have not established anything—'a system already in place to get that up and running.' Well, there is an absolute failure of responsibility.

The government had one major job this year, and that was to effectively roll out the vaccine. They had a particular responsibility in the aged-care sector. They have failed and it has cost lives. I fear that the complacency of this government, who thought it wasn't a race against this deadly disease, is going to cost more lives, especially with the delta strain out and active. We lag behind countries like Fiji, Azerbaijan and Panama, just to name a few. They've got better vaccination rates than Australia. This is hurting our economy, it's hurting our families and it's hurting our aged care. It's time the government did their job and told the truth.