‘I wasn’t the only one’: Colbeck defends going to the cricket

Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck says he “continued to pay attention to aged care” while at a three-day Ashes Test as Omicron swept through the sector, saying he stands by his decision to attend.

“I’m very careful to balance and acknowledge the different elements of my portfolio,” Senator Colbeck, who is also the Minister for Sport, told a COVID-19 senate committee hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck has defended his decision to go to the cricket while Omicron spread.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Senator Colbeck said there were other parliamentarians at the Test that day, naming fellow Tasmanian, opposition agriculture spokesperson Julie Collins, who he said had left Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s regional tour of Queensland “to ensure that she could be at the cricket”.

“So, I wasn’t the only one,” he said.

Senator Colbeck had declined a request to appear before the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 along with Health Department bureaucrats on January 14, the first day of the three-day Ashes Test, saying he was busy dealing with Omicron.

“I wasn’t just at the cricket,” he told the committee hearing on Wednesday, detailing virtual meetings held over the three days with aged care operators and the Health Department, discussing issues including booster clinics and understaffing.

The committee’s chair, Labor senator Katy Gallagher, asked: “Why should you keep your job?”

She pointed to data showing that, at the time, there were COVID-19 outbreaks in thousands of aged care facilities, which were under so much pressure that former NSW premier Mike Baird called for the military to be deployed to help provide care.

Senator Colbeck said he had “continued to work assiduously and pay attention to the elements that require attention” in the aged care sector on three days of the Test from January 14.

“It was a decision that I made. I have to stand by it and live with it,” he said.

Senator Colbeck said he took the responsibilities of both sport and aged care seriously and that the first Ashes Test to be held in Hobart was “a significant event” for the state.

“I spent the predominant part of the day working on the aged care outbreak in the morning of the 14th,” he said.

Tasmanian independent senator Jacqui Lambie blasted Senator Colbeck for telling the committee he could not attend the hearing on January 14 because he did not want to “divert resources” from the government’s Omicron response, asking if he “wasn’t truthful” and “would rather go to the cricket and drink frothies”.

Senator Colbeck said he stood by his statement and that he had not wanted the Health Department to be distracted from responding to the high case numbers in the community and the aged care sector at the time.

“I’ve never refused to appear before the committee,” he said. “The conversation that we were having was around the timing.”

Senator Gallagher asked the minister if he accepted the residential aged care system “is in complete crisis?”

“No, I don’t accept that the system is in complete crisis,” he replied.

“I know it is certainly working very, very hard to manage the impacts, particularly of the Omicron outbreak. My view, and the data supports that, is that the sector is performing and has performed exceptionally well in the work that it’s doing.”

Senator Colbeck could not say what proportion of the nation’s more than 2700 aged care facilities were experiencing staff shortages and how many had received workforce support from the Commonwealth, taking this question on notice.

“We’re monitoring very closely the situation with regard to workforce,” he said.

Asked why he thought the government’s $400 bonus payment would be enough to compensate workers for the strain of working in understaffed facilities during the Omicron wave, the minister said the program had been designed after talks with unions.

The payments would be made once providers lodged their paperwork, he said, with the turnaround depending “on when the facility puts a claim in.”