Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we have yet another example that it's all politics and zero policy from those opposite. It's all personality attacks and little focusing on the substance of issues that need to be addressed. When you listen to those opposite, you'd be forgiven for thinking there is some sort of alternative universe Australia could operate in—an alternative universe in which COVID can be locked in a box and somehow kept away, an alternative universe in which omicron is not the significant global game changer it is. But that's not true. That is not the reality of the world we face. We face a global pandemic, a highly infectious global pandemic—a global pandemic which has produced new variants that are more infectious and more transmissible and that, through that, have created new challenges. Those variants have, however, become less lethal, thankfully, and less likely to lead to severe hospitalisation and severe health outcomes. We can be grateful for that. The reality is COVID is spreading throughout the world. Omicron has seen a huge surge in case load right throughout the world, and no country has demonstrated that, when you have omicron COVID spreading throughout your community, you're somehow going to be able to completely keep it out of different sectors of your community, such as the aged-care sector.

Rather than denigrate the aged-care sector and aged-care workers, our government thanks them; I want to, and I know Minister Colbeck does. Does this motion that Senator Keneally has moved today thank aged-care workers anywhere in it? No, it doesn't. Does this motion thank aged-care operators anywhere in it? No, it doesn't. Does it acknowledge the circumstances? No. It's just a political diatribe we're seeing here, typical of the Labor Party. If there were a silver bullet to address the challenges in aged care, in dealing with omicron COVID-19, not only would we have sought to deliver that as a government; it might have provided a policy idea for those opposite, because they've shown no policy idea in the aged-care sector today—not a single policy idea from those opposite.

Our government has ensured 100 per cent of residential aged-care facilities have been visited by in-reach clinics to deliver booster doses. We have provided surge workforce capacity. More than 80,000 shifts have been filled by surge workforce, including nurses, GPs, care workers, allied health workers and executive ancillary staff. There is the private health agreement in place to utilise private hospital staff, with furloughing changes made to minimise the loss of staff due to requirements to isolate. In terms of PPE, we have seen more than 42 million masks, more than 15 million gowns, more than 43 million gloves, more than 12 million goggles and nearly 11 million rapid antigen tests delivered throughout the aged-care sector. We have made sure 50,000 treatments have been sent out to aged-care facilities across the country, ensuring that we prioritise those facing outbreak.