Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck starts the hearing by acknowledging those elderly Australians who have died from Covid-19 in nursing homes. Sincere condolences, he says. "Every death is an absolute tragedy."

Colbeck says the aged care workforce has been operating under "quite unfair scrutiny" at times. Then says no country has managed to avoid Covid-19 outbreaks in residential aged care.

"We can always do it better. I acknowledged at the last hearing there were some things that we haven't got right," Colbeck says.

Aged care regular Janet Anderson has some opening comments she would like to make. "Each death is not a number in the daily tally but a person who lived, loved and was loved."

Anderson says she recognises now that the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission "erred" in not referring info about St Basil's aged care home when it heard about the outbreak on July 10. Still saying it's not their role, though.

First question to Min Colbeck. "Can you confirm that the Australian govt is the primary funder and regulator of aged care in Australia?"

Colbeck: "That's correct."

And Aus govt responsibility is to keep aged care residents safe?

Colbeck pauses. "Our responsibility is to provide information to the aged care sector."

. @SenKatyG follows up again: "So you're saying it's not your job to keep people in residential aged care safe from the pandemic?"

Colbeck says it is everybody's responsibility, including state governments.

"Why is it so hard to say that you're in charge?"

Colbeck asked how many residents of nursing homes have died from Covid-19. Struggles to find the detail. Department of Health first assistant secretary Amy Laffin responds:

8am 20 August: 258 care recipients. 254 were residential care recipients, remaining four were home care.

Colbeck is struggling with his system to find the data about current cases of Covid-19 in residential aged care. @SenKatyG is surprised. "It's not front of mind for you, the number?"

Do you or the government accept any responsibility for the unnecessary and avoidable deaths of hundreds of aged care residents during this pandemic, @SenKatyG asks.

Colbeck: "We accept responsibility."

Colbeck is asked about the horrifying state of nursing homes that have been revealed as outside workforces go in to provide support. How has this been allowed to occur?

"How could the govt that has accepted responsibility and is in charge of that system, how could that occur?"

Colbeck asked why the govt has been absent. He says: "I find it offensive. The government wasn't absent. The govt has been there every step of the way, I think it is quite an offensive assertion you are making."

Colbeck: "The resources of the entire health system have been stretched. The resources of the aged care sector have been... significantly diminished. That is why we have worked... to bring additional resources to bear."

Colbeck: "I can say to you quite frankly that the circumstance in Victoria remains quite fragile. The workforce is extremely stretched. We spend significant time each day working on securing a workforce. There is considerable effort going into this."

@SenKatyG "There is now!"

Colbeck is asked at what point he became concerned about the level of community transmission in Victoria. He says he became concerned in June.

"We were all concerned in June."

@SenKatyG: "So what did you do about it, when you became concerned?"

Colbeck: "We were bringing together our teams that were working with facilities on a daily basis. Of course, we put into place the Victoria aged care response centre."

@SenKatyG: "That wasn't until the end of July."

Colbeck is asked what he ~specifically~ did to prepare in June. He can't really point to anything except to say "we continued to build on our capacity" which is one of those sentences that means whatever you want it to mean.

So specifically in June Colbeck says there was updated advice to the sector in a letter. "We were meeting weekly with the aged care providers," he says. And some other stuff which doesn't make a lot of sense and believe me I am trying to make sense of it.

"Minister, none of this is about ramping up the response specifically linked to community transmission," @SenKatyG says. She says she heard him, the PM, Brendan Murphy all say "we couldn't help it because community transmission rose." But that was a KNOWN risk, what did you do?

Colbeck and govt keep saying community transmission made virus in nursing homes a fait accompli. This really does ignore that well resourced, well staffed and properly protected (ie: with PPE) nursing homes have and CAN keep the virus out, as long as govt does its bit.

Also community transmission IS the virus. It's not some super boss level in the pandemic. It is a feature of the pathogen and viral spread. And we knew about it. We knew about it in January.

. @SenKatyG "Do you think the letters to providers, and the meetings, do you think you did enough?"

Colbeck: "You are making some assertions..."

Colbeck: "In some circumstances we haven't got it right. And we apologise for that. We are not happy that some things have not worked out or that we encountered circumstances that none of us had anticipated..."

@SenKatyG "Well, we'll come back to that."

I would dearly love to know which bits of the pandemic they had not anticipated, given international evidence.

It's not NYE, Australia didn't do coronavirus at midnight before the rest of the world (apart from NZ).

Michael Lye is being asked about outbreak data within aged care homes. "That data has not been made public," he says. This is a big part of my news feature in @SatPaper tomorrow because this has grave consequences.

Rachel Siewert. "Why won't you give it to them, so that they can do everything they need to do so that Covid does not get into their facilities?"

Lye says that info is shared with providers where they believe there is a "risk." I'm calling bullshit, because that ain't happening.

Rachel Siewert: "Aren't the providers entitled to know where all the potential risks are coming from?"

Brendan Murphy says that info is readily available on the Vic website. "Just the suburbs," he says. "That's the relevant factor for risk." Again, bullshit. Sorry.

Professor Murphy doesn't seem to understand that agency aged care workers might live in a particular suburb but work in a nursing home somewhere completely different. He doesn't seem to know how risk works in this situation at all, actually.

"We think it is completely unreasonable for that facility to be in the public domain," Murphy says about nursing homes where they have only had one case of Covid-19. Again, not the point. Providers are asking for this info. Not me.

I threaded that wrong.

Sen James Paterson is asking about hospitals being reluctant in accepting, or outright refusing, aged care residents. Colbeck says there "have been some issues in that." I have more on this tomorrow in @SatPaper also. The C'wlth had power to act here, too.

The key question here is WHEN was the private hospital national partnership agreement was first used in Victoria. I asked the Department of Health this on Tuesday and they have still not responded to the question.

This is big. Dept aged care boss Michael Lye is now saying that, since Newmarch, a "key learning" is that "it is now kind of accepted" that moving residents out of nursing homes that are under stress is actually a thing that needs to be done.

Senator Paterson is good on this. He mentions that Covid-19 negative aged care residents have the right to remain negative. "And early transfer into hospital... could help avoid (transmission) couldn't it?"

Paterson moves on to Professor Murphy. He's asking about hotel quarantine and the role this played in re-introduction of the virus into Victoria. This happened, no doubt about it, but that ain't the issue. This is a pandemic. We expected multiple waves of this thing.

Murphy: "This virus is incredibly infectious and unfortunately the Victorian public health response was unable to control the outbreaks." Murphy acknowledges virus is very infectious! Revolutionary. Now how did they apply this knowledge in April, June, July when they had time?

Again, I would make the point, that "aged care did bad because Victoria had community transmission" is like saying "I had a bad Wednesday because the universe was created 14bn years ago." But I live in this universe. So what did I do with that deep knowledge to avoid pain?

Colbeck confirms, as aged care minister, he is not a member of the federal cabinet. He says he has, however, attended a number of cabinet meetings and Expenditure Review Committee meetings. "I'd have to check the dates, chair," he says.

Colbeck says he can't remember if he briefed cabinet on the royal commission's interim report. "I'd have to check the record." You can't remember that, @SenKatyG asks, incredulous?

Colbeck says he was meant to brief cabinet about two weeks ago re: Victorian outbreak. He couldn't because his "IT system wasn't working." Health Minister Greg Hunt did instead. This is embarrassing. Who cut his comms line?

Colbeck has just conceded that he didn't brief cabinet on the Victorian outbreak in the month of July. The scheduled briefing was August 5. Like, more than six weeks into the outbreak.

. @SenKatyG: "Minister, how many national cabinet meetings have you attended?"

"I'll have to check the record on that," Colbeck says.

"Oh, come on," @SenKatyG says.

Minister Colbeck says he had access to the Dorothy Henderson Lodge report in early April. This report wasn't released by the fed govt until it was tendered to the Royal Commission.

Colbeck is asked how govt could say St Basil's workforce furlough (July) took them by surprise when they knew about workforce impacts as early as March. Colbeck says they were talking about care staff, St Basil's was all staff. "Convenient interpretation," says @SenKatyG

Colbeck: "Based on our planning, that is what we sincerely believed at the time. We did not anticipate that the entire workforce, including management, cleaning, catering staff would all be declared close contacts." Is there a forcefield around non-care staff??

Is there a workforce surge strategy for aged care?

Colbeck: "There's not a document."

Jaw. Floor.

Colbeck: "There are a series of contracts that we have put in place as the demand continues to grow."

@SenKatyG "But you're just reacting! Putting a BandAid here and a BandAid there. Where was the plan?"

@SenKatyG: "So there is no aged care workforce surge strategy that you can point me to?

Colbeck: "It's part of the overall public health response."

Rachel Siewert is asking about the workforce strategy taskforce report which was handed to fed govt in 2017 I think and was released two or three days before Morrison called the royal commission in September/Oct 2018 (from memory). tl;dr: you knew how bad things were!

Sorry I had to get a drill and burrow to the centre of the earth to pick up my jaw from before. Back on it.

Colbeck says "if" the federal aged care regulator needs more resources "we will provide it." I have a hunch that they do.

Siewert asks again, HOW MUCH would it take to better protect aged care residents? Has govt done any work on this? Murphy fudges. "I don't think it is possible to completely protect any part of society," he says. That wasn't the question.

Colbeck says "I really don't believe" that they could have limited the number of facilities that contracted Covid-19. I think that comment is far more revealing than he thinks it is. That is astonishing.

Siewert: "If you don't think it is possible to reduce it, why are you putting all of these policies in to reduce it?" Not that they shouldn't try, Siewert says. But it's a good point.

Colbeck: "I don't believe it is possible to completely protect all the residents in aged care."

Govt position seems to be if we can't protect everyone then what's the point in trying? "We have not placed limits on any resources on any facility where there has been an outbreak," Colbeck says. Bookmark this. That's now on record...

. @MurrayWatt says it "is just simply not true is it" that the govt could not have anticipated the complete loss of the workforce at St Basil's. We are back to this circular argument. Colbeck says they didn't think their advice meant ALL the workforce, just the ENTIRE workforce.

When does the entire workforce not mean the entire workforce? Stay tuned.

Wow, I've just seen the tabled response to a question about how many extra staff the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission received to deal with Covid-19 preparedness. The answer? 13. Thirteen. That's the federal regulator FYI.

tl;dr how could you not know the entire workforce could not be lost in July when you knew in March the entire workforce could be lost ah but yes what do you mean by entire workforce, well we might stick with the ordinary definition of 'entire', but what did you mean all etc etc

If we keep going on this point I imagine ordinary language may crumble before our very eyes and the rest of the hearing can be conducted with the effortless deployment of stern looks

I mean, really, when govt advice is homes could lose "80 to 100% of their workforce" do they ordinarily assume there are no cooks, cleaners, gardeners that allow these facilities to run? They said they planned for "worst case scenario". More of a "3rd or 4th worst case" plan imo

. @MurrayWatt "There were at least three separate warnings that this would happen, and it happened again!"

So, Colbeck says again they have not limited resources to any provider WITH a Covid-19 outbreak. I will be filing something soon about how this is very narrow thinking. Providers without outbreaks are struggling to find staff. The entire network is in pieces, esp. in Vic.

Maybe I am being dumb, but I would have thought one way of preventing outbreaks from happening is resourcing services ~before~ they happen. To me, this just highlights the reactive nature of the government's response to Covid-19 in aged care.

lol last Thursday the fed govt changed the name of the CDNA guidelines to a "national aged care plan." After the Royal Commission tore strips off them for the plan they did't have.

Colbeck: "It's always been part of the plan."

Good to see they have their priorities.

Professor Murphy: "Because it is a plan it can be referred to by people as a plan." Murphy was asked if the department recommended these guidelines be renamed. He didn't answer that part.

This is, quite frankly, insane.

Real "the front fell off" areas.

Summary: Govt never had an aged care plan. They had some guidelines. They were called guidelines, even through three updates. Royal Commission calls feds out on this. It is a forensic dissection. Last Thursday, govt renames the guidelines "national aged care plan." Fixed it!

brb changing my name to "Good at Writing"

brb changing my name to "Paying My Bills on Time."

Brendan Murphy says c'wlth has "no evidence" that state-run aged care homes in Victoria were better prepared than non-govt run facilities. He says it's because govt facilities are mainly in the regions with lower exposure to spread of virus.

I keep coming back to this point re: the govt reasoning for why so many aged care residents died. They say community transmission. It's like asking "why did so many aged care residents die" and being told "because of the virus." It ignores ~completely~ what might have been done.

Why was the road toll so high?

Because we invented vehicles.