Scott Morrison's COVID Decisions Have Failed Aged Care

We have learned a lot throughout this pandemic. One of the most important lessons is this: we can take nothing for granted—from our health, to our loved ones, to our jobs, to a sensible political policy debate. Nothing is certain. Australians have learnt this. Unfortunately the government still has failed to learn the lessons of this pandemic. It has no comprehensive plan for our future, none. It's a rite of passage for parents to say to their children, 'I'm not angry; I'm just disappointed.' Although many are angry at this Prime Minister, I am in the disappointed camp. I went back to the first time I spoke in parliament about the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented to us. Two years ago, on 23 March 2020, I said:

… every Australian needs the Prime Minister to do well now. I want him and his team to be incredibly successful in battling this virus. Peoples' lives do rest on them making the right decision day after day after day.

Sadly, like millions of Australians, my trust and hope that this Prime Minister and this government could provide the leadership that Australia needed were misplaced, because it was just a few months later that this Prime Minister and his government had dived into bed with Clive Palmer in the High Court, funding $1 million of his court costs to try and tear down Western Australia's health measures. I note that the member for Dawson said that the various border and other state government health restrictions were not tested in court. Well, I remind those on the government benches, those that sit with the member for Dawson, that it was tested in court. It had the full support of the then Attorney-General, in testing this question. The government piled tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of taxpayer dollars into the campaign that Clive Palmer was running in the High Court. It was tested, and the side that the government chose to back lost. That was a fortunate thing, because it allowed state governments, who have been the real workhorses during this pandemic, to get on with the health measures that were needed to save lives and to save livelihoods.

I can think about other things that this government have chosen not to prioritise during this pandemic—getting enough rapid antigen tests, finding a good distribution mechanism, dealing with the obvious challenges we're going to have around rolling out vaccinations for children and booster doses. But they did have enough time to take millions of dollars of Western Australia's taxpayer funds and tip them into car park rorts all across the east coast. That was a priority for them. Rapid antigen tests were not. If we think about where this government's failures have been most tragically demonstrated, they are in the aged-care sector. We know that in this year alone at least 622 aged-care residents have died of COVID-19. This is a sector in complete crisis, and the government's response has been abysmal.

I believe, and Labor believes, that every Australian deserves to get quality care, whatever life you've led, whatever income is left in your bank balance once you retire. To get quality care, we need to support the people who work in this sector. Supporting aged-care workers and the workforce means listening to them. They have been coming to this building year after year, telling us about the challenges in this sector. They were here last year, talking to us about what it was like working with COVID. The government ignored their message. Now the government is sending in the Australian Defence Force—a crisis response because the government chose not to listen to a sector in crisis.

A quarter of aged-care-worker shifts are currently not being filled. Residents' wounds aren't being tended to, and people are waiting for hours for food, water and basic care. We know that some 60 per cent of aged-care workers have not had their booster shots. We saw in the West Australian today a report that some one-third of aged-care residents have not yet had a booster shot in Western Australia. This is happening at a time when we have COVID outbreaks at Coolibah Care in Mandurah, Brightwater's The Cove in Mandurah and Juniper's Cygnet in Bentley—and we know there are more to come.

I want to thank those who are standing up for aged-care workers, not just in this place but across Australia—their unions who have been here week after week, telling us the aged-care workers' stories, standing up for them to make sure that those who are protecting the most vulnerable people in our aged-care sector get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.