Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Labor senators today relating to COVID-19 in aged care.

Today in question time we had a full display of the inadequate performance of this government and this minister on aged care. Four hundred and fifty-seven older Australians have passed away, with more than 400 of those in the last six weeks alone. Thousands of aged-care residents have contracted the virus, hundreds have been evacuated from their homes, often dehydrated, malnourished and soiled. The system is so fragile that the Defence Force had to be called in to help provide basic care to older Australians because the system couldn't do it without their help.

The criticism we have of this government and this minister is not that they didn't stop COVID-19. Our criticism and the questions we asked today to hold this minister to account are on where they failed to plan properly. Once COVID-19 got into aged-care facilities, they failed to prevent the spread. They knew older Australians were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, they knew the aged-care system and the residential aged-care system were broken and they knew the workforce was fragile. It's casualised, and workers work across multiple sites. They knew community transmission was rising in June, yet it took until late July for the Commonwealth to pull together the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre. They knew that personal and clinical care would be one of the first areas where care of residents would be impacted. They knew PPE was short back in May when 1,350 aged-care providers requested PPE from them. Surely that would have set off an alarm bell that maybe the sector wasn't as prepared as they had thought it was.

Earlier today, we found out that 33 more older Australians who had resided in residential aged care had passed away, and the Commonwealth didn't even know. The government that funds and regulates a system of care for older Australians in this country didn't even know. Can you imagine that happening in any other system where care is provided? Can you imagine it happening in the childcare system—where you just wouldn't know what was happening to the children who were using your services?

It would seem to me that tracking the number of people who had passed away from COVID-19 in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years would be a pretty basic and fundamental element of any pandemic planning exercise. I would have assumed that right from the get-go the government that regulates and funds the sector would want to know some basic information like how many people were contracting the virus and how many people were passing away from it. But it seems it wasn't until August that they put in place a system to audit that. Six months in, they start thinking, 'Actually, we'd better make sure that some of these numbers of people who have passed away actually add up.' This minister's failure in his portfolio of aged care is real. It's a failure to lead, a failure to reform, a failure to prepare, a failure to protect and a failure to plan. But, most of all, it's a failure to properly care for vulnerable Australians, who deserved better.

We hear a lot from the minister in question time of the government trying to play catch-up. They've been trying to spin their way out: 'We've got more money going here and more money going there.' But the facts won't change. The minister knew the sector was vulnerable when he took on this job in May last year. I have no doubt that his incoming brief provided him with information that said: 'This sector is vulnerable. Not only is the sector caring for vulnerable Australians but there is a whole range of issues about how the system runs that makes it vulnerable.' Then the royal commission was called. Surely that would have set off alarms in the minister's head. He gets reports from his department. He knows, and that it our issue today, and that is our issue with his performance: he knew in May last year how vulnerable the sector was. The reports from the Northern Hemisphere were shocking. Yet we see them playing catch-up today, six months in, and nearly 500 people have paid the price for that failure to plan and protect. (Time expired)

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's absolute priority here in this space is to protect the safety of residents and to provide quality care to those in aged-care facilities. It should be a priority of all Australian governments to do that. Of course we express deep sympathy for those who have lost loved ones through this terrible pandemic and those who have had to live with the fallout of a terrible outcome that has occurred, particularly centred around Victoria, but not only there, through the past few months.

I also want to acknowledge upfront that it is right and proper that the opposition come into this place and ask us questions on these issues. There have been terrible outcomes for Australians through the pandemic, and it's right that we convene parliament to allow the opposition to hold the government to account on these issues, to ask questions particularly on behalf of those affected families and residents and to get answers from the government on those things. I think Minister Colbeck over the past week now has taken almost every question from the opposition, and the government is open and transparent about what it is doing, what it has done and where it has gone wrong. And we do acknowledge that things have gone wrong from time to time. We would prefer things to have gone better than they have, but of course this coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed many governments and many plans that were in place. The plans put in place for aged-care facilities back in January have had to be updated and renewed given the special circumstances of this pandemic.

While I acknowledge the correctness of the opposition bringing questions on this issue into this place, the opposition would have a lot more credibility if they held the Victorian Labor government to the same account as they are seeking to do here in this place. Calls for people to resign from this place aren't echoed for the errors and missteps that have occurred in Victoria—which, may I say, seem to be on a much, much larger scale, and indeed the origins of all these problems come from the deficiencies of the Victorian government.

We saw a bizarre situation yesterday. Mr Albanese, the Leader of the Opposition, was calling for coalition ministers to resign but, at the same time, he was continuing to defend the disastrous decisions of the Andrews government. In the Daily Telegraph today, 'Albo's "blind spot" on Dan' puts it nicely and succinctly. The Daily Telegraph points out that yesterday on the ABC Mr Albanese was defending the shocking record of the Victorian government's tracking and tracing system; not just the hotel quarantine system—that's a whole other story—but the tracking and tracing system in Victoria, which has clearly not been up to scratch. Mr Albanese is running a protection racket for the Labor Party, not a proper accountability mechanism for all Australian governments.

If only the Victorian parliament and the Victorian people could hold their government to account as much as is occurring here in Canberra. We have convened the federal parliament. We've brought people from all around the country, with different quarantine arrangements and different border restrictions. We've made it work because it's right and proper to have the parliament here to answer these questions. Yet the Victorian parliament refuses to sit—or the Victorian government refuses to allow the Victorian parliament to sit. Like some modern-day King Charles, the Victorian Premier is saying no. He's not allowing the parliament to sit and, just like King Charles, the only way he's going to reconvene parliament is to give himself more executive powers so that he doesn't have to have parliament back again. In fact, I had a look at it last week. The Victorian parliament, by my calculations, has sat for, I think, seven days in the last five months. It is around 150 days since coronavirus took off and necessarily caused some disruption to parliamentary sittings. Despite parliaments all around Australia and the world finding ways to sit and to do things remotely in this new and modern world, the Victorian government continues to hide from the people. It continues to hide from accountability, and the Labor Party here federally are complicit in providing that protection.

I won't have time to talk more, which I would have loved to do, about some of the things that we are doing to fix the situation in Victoria. My colleague, Senator Rennick, might take up some of that. We are making sure we provide substantial assistance to the aged-care sector to help with increased staffing to deal with the issues of having to displace staff when an outbreak occurs in a facility and providing the Defence Force where possible. We'll continue to do that, because our focus remains on providing adequate, quick care to those in this terrible situation. (Time expired)

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Question time today highlighted the fact that the minister is now acknowledging the tragic deaths of some 457 people in our aged-care facilities across the country. What was particularly remarkable was that he said that there were 33 people that he as the minister didn't know about, and this had to be reported. It's a consequence that I find quite an extraordinary proposition, particularly in the case that we're talking about of Victoria. When I checked today, my advice was that, as the minister suggested, those figures of 420 Victorians in aged-care facilities who had passed away during this crisis needed further work. He said that the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre clearly needed to do further work to reconcile the figures.

The number of 420 that the Victorians are using today stands in contrast to the 457 that the Commonwealth is still using. What's of particular concern to me is that the tragic deaths that have occurred have entirely been within Commonwealth managed facilities. There has not been one death in a Victorian government run facility. All of these fatalities have been in centres that you would have thought the Commonwealth would have had a direct line of advice on. Of course, the Victorian government run facilities are public facilities and, unlike the private ones, have mandated minimum staffing requirements, so the question around quality and the deregulation of private facilities, which I think is at the core of much of the quality issues, doesn't arise.

We know that many groups—public, private and not-for-profit—play a role in providing care for our aged Australians. But what is absolutely critical is that it's the Commonwealth government that has overall responsibility—a proposition that the Prime Minister has acknowledged on many occasions. In that context, it's a simple proposition. He set up a royal commission, but he has then sought to ignore that royal commission and the advice that that royal commission has provided to him in its interim report. As recently as 24 August, the royal commissioners have said that, currently, the Australian government has no care quality outcome reporting for its home care and reports are only on three indicators for its residential care, and that had the Australian government acted on previous reviews of aged care the persistent problems in aged care would have been known much earlier and the suffering of many people would have been avoided.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who has been referred to today by Senator Wong in her question, made it very clear in her submission to the royal commission that the aged-care sector is on the brink of collapse. She said:

There needs to be a clear direction to Government to stop tinkering at the edges and to undertake real structural reform.

…     …        …

The Coalition had promised real reform of the sector, regrettably, it instead became a merry-go-round of ministers, with lack of stability and inertia as demonstrated by the Aged Care Sector Committee design and operation.

By any standards, this minister, under previous conservative governments' arrangements, should have resigned. But it's not just this minister who should be held to account in terms of responsibilities. The role of the health minister himself comes into question. He's the senior cabinet minister. He's the minister responsible at the cabinet table. Why has he left these vital tasks to the junior minister when there had been so many warning signs and so many examples of the failure and administrative neglect of the system to the point where they don't even know how many people have died as a result of their failures? The Prime Minister has tried to dodge this issue, cut funding and pretend it's someone else's problem, as we heard yet again today. He has tried to blame somebody else: the health minister or the junior minister. This is a government that has presided over a shocking tragedy. This is a government that should front up to its responsibilities and should acknowledge that there needs to be— (Time expired)

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it's time we had a look at the facts. Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has admitted that people dying with COVID are being counted as people dying from COVID, particularly those in aged care and palliative care. He said: 'Anyone who is a confirmed case who dies is classified amongst coronavirus deaths. So it doesn't have to be definitely from coronavirus and in some instances in aged care there would have been some residents who were already receiving palliative care who became infected with coronavirus.' So it's not definite about whether or not they died with or from coronavirus. I have to say that, on seeing the video, I was quite shocked by this, because I would have thought governments would have a duty of care to properly disclose the number of deaths from COVID. Why are people already in palliative care being counted as COVID deaths?

More to the point, why isn't the Victorian Labor government telling the truth? It's a total abuse of power to curtail people's liberties without proper disclosure. Are those opposite going to apologise to the minister for the slurs and the pile-on in this chamber—in particular, for implying that these deaths were avoidable when, in some cases, it appears that they weren't? Instead of asking Minister Colbeck to resign, why don't they demand that the Premier of Victoria resign? He was the one who failed to contain community transmission. He was the one who didn't have enough contact tracers, unlike New South Wales, which was much better prepared. The Andrews Labor government failed to have enough contact tracers. Even worse, he was the one who pulled staff from St Basil's with only a day's notice, leaving the federal government to come in and clean up the mess. Wouldn't you make sure you had appropriate staffing in place before leaving these residents to fend for themselves?

Wouldn't you get the residents into hospitals so they could be cared for? The whole point of the lockdown in March was so that state governments could get their health systems up to speed to deal with COVID-19. Can someone tell me: are some state governments—in particular, Victoria and Queensland—using the police force and not the health system to deal with COVID? You can't help the weak by tearing down the strong. You don't lock down the economy indefinitely without an exit plan. The state premiers need to lay out an exit plan. The fact is, there have been minimal cases of COVID in all states except Victoria.

We're not getting much information on this, and I know those opposite us have been attacking Minister Colbeck for not having information to hand. I've chasing up information for the last five months now on the number of people dying from suicide, depression, homelessness and things like that. Most of that information comes from state governments, and a lot of it hasn't been forthcoming. I find it very frustrating every day to listen to these press conferences by state premiers rattling off numbers to do with COVID, but they seem to ignore every other health impact and every other impact on society that are also going on. It's about time state premiers start to look at the overall picture and not just look at COVID. In my view, some of this is to try to divert attention from what I'd have to say is mismanagement of the health system, particularly in Queensland.

I'll quote you some numbers on Queensland. There are now 2,774 patients waiting longer than is safe for surgery. I should add that a lot of those patients were waiting pre COVID, because the Labor Party in Queensland has destroyed our health system. The queue of Queenslanders who are forced to wait longer than the clinically recommended time for surgery is now 20 times longer than it was before the pandemic. The Rural Doctors Association of Australia came out two weeks ago and said that the border closures were creating a second healthcare crisis. That didn't turn out to be an understatement, did it? We've now seen the death of a baby, thanks to Annastacia Palaszczuk's confusing border laws that led to a delay in a mother and baby getting adequate medical attention. I've seen the Queensland Labor Party do some pretty low things over the years, like introducing poker machines and closing over 30 maternity wards in the regions, and I've seen record waiting lists for surgery, ambulance ramping and record crime rates, but I don't think I've seen anything—as callous as what Annastacia Palaszczuk has done— (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, I do remind you once again that it is a broad-ranging discussion. You were mostly on topic—which was to take note of answers from Senator Colbeck. So I'd ask you to bear that in mind in future.

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There have been 457 aged-care residents who have died—older Australians with families, friends, children and grandchildren—and there are loved ones who are grieving. What is happening in our aged-care homes is a national tragedy and a national disgrace. The Morrison government has no plan to address the crisis in aged care. The Morrison government needs to fix the home-care crisis now. The reality of this government's aged-care mess means the waiting time to receive high-level care at home is almost three years.

At the front line of this crisis are the workers. When they show up for a shift, they deserve to know that there will be adequate protective equipment for them. They shouldn't have to choose which hand to put a glove on. They deserve training in infection control for their protection and for the protection of those they care for. And yet, as the Herald Sun today reported, federal aged-care authorities are in the dark over whether staff are working at more than one home. This is despite a report, A matter of care: Australia's aged care workforce strategy, delivered to this government two years ago which recommended a national database of workers. Such a database would help aged-care authorities to monitor whether aged-care workers are working at more than one home. During a pandemic, this is invaluable information. Many aged-care workers work at multiple aged-care facilities and, unfortunately, have spread the virus. They felt they could not call in sick if they felt unwell. In fact, some were told they must come to work even if they were sick. This is a broken system. And this government has sat on that report, instead of taking action.

It is so clear. The warnings were there, but there are still no answers from Senator Colbeck. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's interim report, entitled Neglect, was tabled on 31 October 2019. That report found that the aged-care system fails to meet the needs of its older vulnerable citizens. In Darwin, in the Northern Territory, powerful evidence was heard about the stark challenges faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This included challenges of poverty, food insecurity, difficulties accessing services, lack of culturally safe and secure services and distance from services. Overall, the report found that a fundamental overhaul of the design objectives, regulation and funding of aged care in Australia is required. It does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care, it is unkind and uncaring towards older people and, in too many instances, it neglects them.

First Nations people look at our old people as our elders. We treat them with utmost respect, knowing that they carry a wealth of knowledge of our stories—our stories as a people, our stories as a family. Today, we heard that 457 elders of our Australian community have died. Still, we do not see any accountability with this government. There are no changes in the care for our elder Australians. There is no care, despite the desperate need for what has to happen now. There isn't even the recognition of what they could have done so much sooner. The warnings were definitely there.

Aged care is a federal responsibility full-stop. This government has withheld support from the sector. Those opposite are responsible for aged care and they haven't protected our elders from this coronavirus. Scott Morrison has no plan to address the crisis in aged care. Anthony Albanese does have a plan. It includes the introduction of minimum staffing levels, adequate supplies of personal protective equipment and better training for staff on infection control, as well as a better surge workforce strategy. The Australian public has lost confidence in Senator Colbeck.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator McCarthy. I just remind you to refer to those in the other place by their correct titles.

Question agreed to.