PM talks down aged care deaths, Labor claims
Labor claims PM ‘talks down’ 700 Covid deaths as Australia experiences ‘worst aged care crisis in its history’.
Scott Morrison is taking Australia to a “really dark place” by talking down the significance of more than 700 Covid deaths in aged care homes this year, Labor‘s aged care services spokeswoman Claire O’Neil said.
Ms O’Neil said the last nine weeks had been the “worst aged care crisis in Australia’s history’, with people in the sector telling her many nursing homes were currently operating at unsafe staffing levels and some workers describing their facilities as akin to a “war zone.”
After a bruising fortnight for the government, where it became clear Labor would be targeting aged care as a key election battleground, Ms O’Neil on Friday told a National Aged Care Alliance conference her recent discussions with aged care providers had revealed a new tone of “desperation.”
“They told me straight, many homes across the country were not operating at safe staffing levels. That meant many residents were not getting proper care,” Ms O’Neil told the conference.
“In some cases, residents were locked down in their rooms, alone, for weeks at a time. The impacts on physical and mental health were severe.
“I spoke to a group of staff a few days later, and they told me that their workplace was like a war zone.”
The Omicron wave has pushed quickly into Australia’s nursing homes, with around a third of the 2900 facilities currently dealing with an active outbreak, a Senate Estimates hearing heard this week.
This year more than 700 Covid-positive nursing home residents had died, more than in 2020 when aged care bore the brunt of national fatalities.
“I think most people in the sector would agree that we have just seen – from Christmas to today – the worst aged care crisis in Australian history,” Ms O’Neil said.
But Mr Morrison seemed to be attempting to downplay the significance of Covid deaths in aged care, she said.
“The Prime Minister … has repeatedly inferred … that pandemic deaths in aged care as not nearly as bad as everyone seems to think, because people in aged care die anyway.
“To me, this is a new low in the debate. If our starting point is that people’s lives are less important because they are elderly, we have entered a really dark place,” Ms O’Neil said.
Aged care services minister Richard Colbeck faced a hostile Senate Estimates committee during the week, where he said he hadn’t offered his resignation to the Prime Minister over his handling of the portfolio during Covid, and believed he continued to be the right person for the job.
Senator Colbeck said the government had taken numerous measures to address pressures in aged care, and had shown its support for the sector with an $18 billion aged care package in the last budget, and additional retention bonus payments to nursing home staff.
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