Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that ministers are busy and they have to juggle competing pressures. It's part of the job. It's what they're paid for, in fact. But many Australian workers have faced the pressures of a busy and demanding job, particularly those in the aged-care sector and especially during the COVID-19 outbreak. Thank you to all of them. When the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, Senator Colbeck, was asked to appear before the 14 January hearing of the Senate COVID committee he declined, citing 'urgent and critical work combating omicron'. I was horrified to learn that Minister Colbeck declared that he received 'sponsored travel and hospitality to attend three days of the cricket in Hobart'. I'm sure he was fed and probably watered—to be polite—which is a lot more than some of our aged-care residents have been able to be recently. It's completely inacceptable that a minister in this government who is overseeing an ongoing crisis in aged care, where people are dying, chose to go to the cricket for three days instead of fronting up to do his job, especially when the committee had only asked for him for two hours and 45 minutes. He could have participated remotely.

Our aged-care workers are doing phenomenal work under extremely trying conditions. We need to remember the aged-care sector was in crisis before COVID even hit. There has been almost nine years of disgraceful neglect of some of our most vulnerable people, but Mr Morrison and Senator Colbeck have not learned from the terrible mistakes that happened in aged care because of their own incompetence and funding cuts. When Minister Colbeck finally fronted the committee, he still denied there was a crisis. We've had 22 reports concluding the sector is in crisis as well as a two-year royal commission which found that the average— (Time expired)