Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's actually true, if you were prepared—

An honourable senator interjecting—

It's not in your talking points, I know. I know it's not in your talking points, but you're not prepared to tell Australians that this is the case. It's a disgrace that you believe that Indigenous Australians deserve a lower level of corporate governance over their care than everybody else. I would urge you all to go back to your minister and request that that provision be put back into the legislation. It should be. This is not a political point; this is a point with respect to the care of Indigenous Australians in residential aged care. They deserve the same governance.

As I've said, the quality of corporate governance and the quality of clinical governance in residential aged care have a direct correlation to the quality of care that is delivered to the people within those facilities. That is why we're all here. That is why we are debating this. We can argue over the politics of what happened before and after the election, and we will do that, but let's not forget that it was the coalition that called the royal commission, with all of the pain that it brought us as a government at the time. We called the royal commission, with all of the pain that it caused us. We have responded to every single recommendation from that royal commission. The then government responded to every single recommendation over 12 months ago, in the budget last year.

The new government has not yet responded to one of those recommendations. Where is the government's response to the royal commission? There is none. They announced a five-point plan in their address-in-reply—a five-point plan that started unwinding within 24 hours. It was supposed to include 24/7 nurses. We hear in the media this morning that there are now exemptions from that because the government has come to the realisation—which we already knew—that the implementation of that was an issue because of the supply of workforce. The plan included a promise for a pay rise which wasn't within the budgeted amount that they said it was. They don't know where the nurses are coming from, they don't know how many they need, and they haven't yet told us how much they're going to cost. I'll be interested to see whether it's in the economic statement this afternoon. We certainly expect to see it in the budget.

This piece of legislation is the second tranche of legislation in support of reforms out of the royal commission. It's not the first, as the government would like you to believe. It is the second piece of legislation that supports those reforms. It is an important piece of legislation. It should pass this place. But for the very reasons that I've mentioned in my contribution today, government members should go back and talk to their minister about protecting Indigenous Australians in ACCHO managed aged-care facilities around this country. They ought to go back and talk about a workforce registration program that already exists, rather than kowtowing to their union leaders, and save the sector some money and also save the taxpayers some money in the process, because it was a sensible and smart reform.