Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's been a lot of talk about the aged-care minister choosing to spend three days at the cricket while the aged-care sector was, and does remain, in crisis. He did this instead of turning up to a Senate COVID committee. Like everyone else in this parliament, Minister Colbeck has to decide how to use his time. I have to balance priorities all of the time. And no-one would begrudge the minister going to the cricket. He is the sports minister. But really? Three days? That was not an exercise of good judgement.

But I think what that does show us is the fact that, whilst we've got this pandemic, whilst we've got this crisis that has been brought home by the royal commission, we need to have a focus on aged care. So I'm trying to be helpful here and say to the government that we need to have an aged care minister that is solely focused on aged care—not two portfolios, not three portfolios, but one portfolio, one minister for aged care looking after aged-care people. Our elderly deserve that.

They also deserve the implementation of the recommendations of the royal commission on aged care. We've seen a debacle this week in relation to the Religious Discrimination Bill in this place. We could have been dealing with the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2021 that is on the Notice Paper, helping our aged-care sector. I've got an amendment in there that gives us nurses in aged care 24/7. It raises the standard of care. We need to do that. Ageing should be a privilege, not a punishment.