Senator STOKER (Queensland) (15:10): No-one could help but be moved, thinking about how difficult it must be to be someone facing the end of their lives and unable to be with their families, unable to have the comfort and support of the people with whom they have travelled the journey of life. I can speak from experience. Early on during the aged-care impacts of COVID-19 I lost my grandfather, and it was very difficult not to be able to be with him in the last moments of his life. He's a man I loved. He immigrated to this country from Austria. He built a life here. He came with very few skills. He was a person who worked in the textile factories at the time he immigrated, and by the time he finished his career he was a foreman at Kimberly-Clark, making the nappies that I suspect my children wore for the many years they were small. And he was a thoroughly good man. But he died alone. None of the criticisms that are being levelled by those opposite are in a logical sense truly connected to my experience of loss or to the experience of loss that many other Australians have undergone in recent times, as we have all as a nation had to adapt to the difficulty of the restrictions that come with COVID-19. It's hard even now for people with a loved one in aged care not to be able to give them the usual support and care they ordinarily would give with love as an expression of gratitude for the many gifts that the older person has given throughout the course of their life. It remains difficult, but it's also reflective of the collective sacrifices Australians from all walks of life are making as we attempt to get under control a virus that is ravaging the world. It's ravaging people's health, it's ravaging our economy and it's having knock-on consequences for communities everywhere. So to acknowledge the hardship that comes from this difficult time is a very different thing to trying to pretend that this is all about the minister's role. The minister has stepped up enormously during a difficult time. There have been fast adaptations of a big industry to hardships that have been quite unprecedented. Opposition senators interjecting— Senator STOKER: Those opposite, who like to interject, like to make out that they're a bit holier than thou on this stuff. But this isn't just me talking. We can't allow this kind of misinformation to stand. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth is on the record with this. He says that allegations that the government lacked urgency when helping aged-care homes to battle coronavirus are insulting. That's what you're doing: you're insulting the aged-care workers who have tried so hard to adapt to the challenge of this time. Similarly, he has said: … the first thing to say is that there were many words used in the royal commission witness statements today that perhaps don't reflect the totality of the Government's response, both at federal and state level to preventing deaths in aged care. Here's the guts of it: This is a virus that disproportionately affects the aged in our community. That is not a statement of futility, it is a statement of fact. That's a direct quote from him. You can cast arrows at me all you like, but that is a statement of fact from a man of science who understands how viruses like this work. It is very easy to throw political arrows over this side and try and claim a scalp or two, or try and string up a minister to blame, but ultimately this is the nature of the virus. We are doing everything that can possibly be done to get it under control so that people in our community, people like my family, don't have to experience the death of a loved one alone.