Scott Morrison is up at a press conference talking about aged care failures. He is referring to the massive operation underway now. Which, again, is not the issue ventilated over the last week. There. Was. No. Plan. None of the issues were unforeseeable.

“No one has ever had to deal with this before,” he says. Except by March in Australia people had. In China, in Italy. In Hong Kong. In Europe.

Morrison is referring to the Victorian aged care response centre and fact more than 400 aged care residents have been transferred to hospital. Again, this is months and months and months late. More on the origins of this debacle in @SatPaper tomorrow.

“We are doing everything we can to prevent them from occurring wherever we can,” Morrison says. “We are moving heaven and earth as a country to ensure we can deal with this.” In March, apparently, we moved neither heaven nor earth.

Reallllllly wish I was at this press conference.

PM asked if this is a “gross failure” of his government. Morrison says the royal commission has made no finding. True, though if that is your only defence things are bad. Submissions by counsel are a strong indicator.

“There was a plan, Mark. There was a plan and it has been updated. We reject that assertion, Mark. There was a plan.” I think he wants us to say there was a plan.

“The training modules were delivered.” It was a $45,000 online tick a box training module, FYI. And even that wasn’t delivered halfway through the pandemic to half of aged care workers.

Again, Kelly and Morrison are talking about the government’s REACTION to outbreaks in aged care where some 2000 people connected with them in Vic have been infected. What did they do in the months between Newmarch (April) and Vic 2nd wave to prevent this?

Now he’s saying the issue is bad because of community transmission in Victoria. If only there was some evidence that this virus was wildly infectious and that all levels of government make mistakes that can lead to its spread. If only they had prepared aged care.

Morrison says breakdown in workforce in Victoria was a major factor they didn’t see in NSW. Except Dorothy Henderson Lodge lost almost all its workforce, Newmarch lost 84%. This. Is. Not. A. New. Feature. Of. This. Pandemic.

“There is not some special forcefield around aged care facilities,” Morrison says. Well, no. But some protective mechanism might have made a huge difference.

When you don’t have a forcefield I’ll tell you what helps. Personal protective equipment.

No magic forcefield but the CovidSafe app is “sunscreen” yeah righto

Morrison says we now put people into aged care “very much at a pre-palliative stage” and workforce, clinical, facility demands are higher. Why cut $1.2bn from the Aged Care Funding Instrument in 2016 to ~specifically~ cut back spending on complex healthcare / severe behaviours?

That is the direct taxpayer subsidy. Those two domains are for the most frail / high needs residents. And the government cut them. Frailty has been rising for a decade. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

Thank you @danielhurstbne for asking the question that needed to be asked! Love Hursty.

He will hate me doing this but Hursty is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

And another great question from @rosieslewis about hospital transfers. Morrison’s answer again misses the main concern here which is about infection control and the right of negative aged care residents to remain negative.