Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (11:33): I rise today to speak on the Appropriation (Coronavirus Response) Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022. I would like to focus on two critical areas that demonstrate the government's failures across this pandemic. Those areas are aged care and early childhood education and care, which are both critical areas in my community in the electorate of Lalor. Yesterday in question time I was floored to hear the Leader of the Opposition ask a question that gave some details of the deaths in the aged-care sector across the pandemic. There have been 533 deaths reported in 2022, in the summer that we weren't going to have, that this government wished we wouldn't have but did little to prevent. There have been 1,500 deaths in aged care since the beginning of the pandemic—685 in the first year, 2020, in the first terrible winter, a winter when we were not vaccinated, and 282 deaths in 2021, in a winter that saw most people getting vaccinated and the priority being given to the elderly, of course. There have been 533 deaths in 2022. It is only February. This government wants to avoid this conversation. This government wants us to just keep rolling with the punches in this pandemic, to not look back—remember—but to look forward. Well, I'm looking forward to another year of deaths in my community, where we will lose our loved elders. I reference the member for Barton and her reference to the loss of elders in our Indigenous communities, and I say that that is shared across our communities. In my electorate of Lalor, in the first winter of COVID, we lost 65 of our elders in my community. Those were 65 loved grandparents, 65 people who had made enormous contributions to our community, who died in extraordinary circumstances and whose families were left grieving in extraordinary circumstances, unable to visit while their elderly parents, relatives or friends were sick and unable to attend funerals. That was the first winter. It's now 2022, and we are back in the situation in my local community where we have outbreaks of COVID in residential aged-care centres, and worse. There is an aged-care centre in my community that in the first two years of this pandemic avoided outbreaks in residents, worked so hard, and now they have a resident who has contracted the virus. I don't think we can put too fine a point on this. The deaths are absolutely tragic, but the other circumstances also need to be addressed, and they need to be addressed by this government now. It was a trite saying last week: 'We couldn't possibly send the Defence Force in for support.' That position has changed to: 'Now we can send the Defence Force in,' and the glib 'We'll give aged-care workers $400 in two payments.' None of this is addressing the real needs in my community or the communities across this country. None of this is addressing families who are locked out from seeing their family members now, potentially across a two-year period. When I was first elected, I remember visiting aged-care centres in my electorate. It was after the 2014 cruel austerity budget that the Abbott branch of this government introduced into this parliament, and dementia funding had been cut in aged-care facilities. Not surprisingly, aged-care facilities in my community wanted to speak to me about the impact that was going to have on them, so I was there to visit. It was a steep learning curve to spend time with management, with residents and with workers. One of the things I learned was that, because of the previous Labor government's commitments around home care, the length of time that residents spent in aged care had shrunk from what people were saying then was an eight-year average to what people are saying now is a two-year average. That's the time that people spend in aged care. You think about that. The average time is two years. You think about the last two years, and then you think about this summer. This government's failure to act decisively, thoughtfully and consultatively has meant that those two years, for many, have been absolutely terrible. It has meant husbands separated from wives; sons and daughters separated from their parents; patchy visitation across a two-year period—potentially an end-of-life period. Now, in my community, aged-care services are again in lockdown, with staff contracting the virus. Residents have not had the boosters they needed in lots of cases. This government wants us not to notice that this is happening again. They want us not to think about people in their 90s, in their rooms, isolated, fearful, drawing on their best selves to make it through this. They don't want us to think about people who work in aged care who are breaking their hearts every day because they can't deliver the service that they know they were employed to do. It's beyond comprehension to me that the most basic principle—we've all been in these places; we've all visited aged-care facilities in our electorates. We know how the system there works. We know that the staffing ratios often mean that the more people who are able to be in the dining area or the lounge area, the easier it is for their needs to be met on a day-to-day basis. They're not at the moment; many are in their rooms in aged-care centres across this country. That requires more staff, not fewer staff, to ensure their needs are being met. But that's not being discussed by this government. What's happening with this government is that it is protecting a minister in the other place who should be held to account. It is two years into this pandemic and the minister for health and ageing in this place, rather than come to that dispatch box with his list of numbers, to baffle us all with his number and word salads, should be apologising that enough has not been done, that consultation has not delivered better outcomes. This government should be apologising for this summer. It should be apologising for the rapid antigen test shortage. It should be apologising for the fact that the boosters haven't been delivered to our elderly. That's what it should be doing. This one's really personal for me as across the past two years—my elderly mum is 94. We are on rotation with her at the moment. In some ways she's the luckiest person in the world. She had eight children. She has seven surviving children, five of whom live in Melbourne, and we can take turns to do two days or one day to ensure that she doesn't fall while there's nobody else in her home, to ensure that she's getting her needs met. We're lucky there are lots of us. Lots of other Australians don't have that option with their elderly parents. We are lucky that mum is still ambulatory. We are so fortunate. And in view of this, we know how fortunate we are. My heart goes out to every family who has had to make a different decision that suits their lifestyle across this two-year pandemic. My heart goes out to every family that is in grief at the moment—perhaps they've lost their parent or loved one, or perhaps they're just not able to see them. This government needs to stop reading numbers off pieces of paper and start thinking about those Australians. It is an indictment on this government that we are here doing an appropriations bill. Obviously, Labor's going to support appropriations—anything for the pandemic is how this side sees the world at the moment. Anything the government needs from us, we're here to deliver. I wish we had a bit of the reverse happening. When we stood up and begged this government to make sure that the first rollout of the vaccines happened properly, when we begged this government to ensure boosters were getting to where we needed boosters to go, when we begged this government to look at the aged-care staffing crisis and that tired workforce, I wish we'd got some reciprocating respect. The other area where this government has absolutely failed, and for which it has absolute responsibility, is early childhood and education. In my electorate, I have the highest number of families using early education, child care and out-of-school-hours care, so you can imagine how many facilities I have in the electorate. And you can imagine the chaos, and you can imagine the messages I've received over this summer—again, two years and nothing learnt. Two years and no change in implementation or direction. Two years and we have to go back begging—begging!—for things to be put in place for the childcare sector, things that were put in place for other sectors during the first two waves, but the childcare sector is still waiting. You can imagine it, and I will give you one insight. A local constituent inboxed me on Facebook. This is a person who is half of a couple with two children. One of the children has contracted the virus at child care. It's at the height of the lack of available rapid antigen tests, and people in queues for PCRs are waiting for 10 hours. So you've got a sick child, a toddler, and one parent in a car who are up to their fifth hour of waiting. There are no public toilets. I've got a distraught father inboxing me, asking: 'Jo, can you please find a RAT? I read that you guys are getting free RATs. Can we have one?' It sounds like a reasonable thing. Imagine my frustration at not being able to drive to him and deliver one to him, because there are none available in my community. He says to me: 'I'm going to break the rules. I'm going to drive to the PCR testing line.' He's packed the car. He takes down bottles of water. He runs out of bottles of water going car to car to give people water to drink while they wait in that queue. This person deserved better from this government. He deserved a government that looked out the windscreen into the future. He deserved a government that did some planning. He deserved a government that didn't wish the virus away but acted in case it hadn't gone away. We all did. I'll leave my remarks there, with a final message. We are headed into another winter. Winter is coming. The pandemic is not over. I beg this government: please, stop wasting time on other matters; put your heads together and find some solutions for the people in my community and the people across this country.