Aged Care Minister Richard Colbe\u00e7k\u2019s praise of aged care workers at today\u2019s Senate committee hearing about the Federal Government\u2019s Covid response rings hollow given the crisis facing aged care workers and residents, United Workers Union National Aged Care Director Carolyn Smith said today.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard for aged care workers to hear Richard Colbeck congratulate them for \u2018doing a magnificent job\u2019 when they are working double shifts, frequently without adequate PPE amid a shortage of RAT tests, because of failures by the Federal Government,\u201d Ms Smith said today.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s frankly gobsmacking Senator Colbeck is able to say the aged care sector is \u2018performing exceptionally well\u2019; as he says he clearly has not been inside an aged care facility any time recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been 741 deaths in aged care this year, up from 282 last year, exhausted aged care workers are facing massive staff shortages, the booster program failed and residents are being locked in their rooms for weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen does the Federal Government finally recognise the crisis in aged care?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Federal Government has offered a Band-Aid $ 800 bonus payment to aged care workers without seriously addressing some of the lowest wages in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeanwhile the Minister is happy to swan around at the Ashes earning $900 a day, failing aged care residents and workers, and denying the problems in aged care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbe\u00e7k\u2019s praise of aged care workers at today\u2019s Senate committee hearing about the Federal Government\u2019s Covid response rings hollow given the crisis facing aged care workers and residents, United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65403,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358\/revisions\/65403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}