Shepparton Villages chief executive Veronica Jamison addressed the Victorian Parliament Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee on March 1, and recounted harrowing testimony from residents about their lives in COVID-19 lockdowns.
She quoted residents who said “it felt like we were in prison”, “the end of my life was not supposed to be like this” and “it felt like no-one cared, we were locked in our room like little children”.
Mr Colbeck, who was visiting Shepparton under his sport portfolio, when asked what he would say to residents who’d gone through lockdowns, said the pandemic had been “really difficult for everybody, particularly for residents who have gone through that isolation”.
However, he pushed responsibility for the lockdowns back on state governments.
"We recognised that early and some of the advice that we gave to the sector early in the pandemic was that we needed to facilitate visitation,“ Mr Colbeck said.
“We were criticised for that but that was also overlaid by state-based public health orders, which required lockdowns to occur.”
He said advice was now being provided to states that facilitated visitation, and high third-dose uptake in aged care homes helped make that safe.
Ms Jamison, speaking to the oversight committee on March 1, also said staff were left “exhausted” and “spent” following the Omicron wave over summer and after two years of lockdowns.
When asked whether more should have been done to support aged care facilities, including in regional Victoria, Mr Colbeck said the Federal Government had been telling facilities to plan for surge capacity.
“We've provided advice to the sector right from the beginning of the pandemic, they would have to find some initial capacity themselves to cater for staff losses through infections,” Mr Colbeck said.
“That's been there right since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We then said once they'd used or exhausted the available capacity, we would come in with the surge workforce and which we've done, but even in that circumstance, you're looking at a situation where across the entire community we were suffering issues with staff in basically every sector.”
He said defence force support, which was announced in February at the end of the Omicron wave, had been made available.
"We provided the resources that we had available, everything that we had we put into the sector, and that supported them to provide the appropriate level of care,“ Mr Colbeck said.
