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Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is calling on Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck to resign, as the government commissions a task force to analyse deaths in the sector.
Key points:
- There has been a surge of deaths of people with COVID-19 in aged care homes
- Labor insists Richard Colbeck "is not doing his job" to address the issue
- A new federal task force will seek to find out the vaccination status of people who died with COVID-19 in aged care homes
There have been almost 800 COVID-19 deaths in aged care homes since July.
Around 500 of those deaths occurred in January, but federal authorities have been unable to confirm how many of those people had received a COVID-19 booster vaccine.
Outbreaks in aged care centres have also seen residents restricted to their rooms and staff forced into isolation.
Criticism of the government's handling of the sector has grown louder after Senator Colbeck was forced to defend attending an Ashes Test match instead of a parliamentary committee hearing investigating COVID-19 in aged care homes.
"This minister does not have any skills and he is not doing his job," Mr Albanese said.
"He is absent. We actually need a minister who will take responsibility.
"This minister will not take responsibility and when he does front up to a committee hearing yesterday, has refused to acknowledge that there is a crisis."
After defending his decision to attend the Hobart Ashes Test, which he said he did in his role as Sports Minister, Senator Colbeck rejected Labor assertion's the industry was in crisis.
"I don't accept it's in complete crisis," he told a COVID-19 Senate committee hearing yesterday.
"I know it is certainly working very, very hard to manage the impacts, particularly of the Omicron outbreak, but my view, and the data actually supports that, is that the sector is performing and has performed exceptionally well in the work that it's doing."
Task force to investigate COVID deaths
The government insists it has been waiting for states to report booster vaccination data on people who have died with COVID-19 in the aged care sector.
Aged Care Minister Greg Hunt, also the nation's Health Minister, said he had asked the states to provide that information but it was yet to happen.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the new task force would work to find those answers, to offer a better understanding of the causes of death for people who had the virus.
"We are looking to try and get more details about those deaths, it is not an easy thing, the numbers have been challenging," he said.
Mr Albanese said he wanted to know why the government had not acted sooner.
"Is the suggestion the department was not looking at those issues, that they had to set up a task force?" he said.
"Surely they were looking at these issues and this is a non-announcement?
"An announcement would be the government saying that they are going to take serious action."
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