NSW Premier bailed up on decision not to transfer Newmarch House residents to hospital during Q&A appearance

Gladys Berejiklian has defended the decision to treat the COVID-19 positive residents within the Anglicare aged care home – saying that the Government must follow the advice of health experts – during a special episode of the ABC program on Monday night. You can watch a clip here. Appearing with Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, and Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, Ms Berejiklian was asked by a member of the public:

“Why were the residents of Newmarch House Aged Care not immediately hospitalized for treatment, and to reduce the number of further infections?”

The Premier said that they had relied on the advice of the medical experts and “it would be wrong for politicians to make those decisions”.

“The best health advice we have is that it is up to the residents and their families on what their preference is for their treatment,” she said.

Host Hamish McDonald pointed out that those decisions impact on others at the home however – including residents who have tested negative for coronavirus. “Of course, it does,” Ms Berejiklian replied.

“This is again an example of where the regulator has stepped in, looked at the situation now and obviously there are health experts in there as well but during a pandemic, it is really important for us to make the public policy decisions and there are still some decisions that we rely on the health advice for and it would be inappropriate for politicians to interevent or cut across that health advice and also recently national cabinet adopted Australia-wide codes of conduct for aged care facilities.” She went on: “As you know  the federal government regulates aged care facilities but state governments, especially during the pandemic, have a role in the clinical decisions or clinical interventions around that so the new code of conduct I think will guide policy moving forward and the question is completely justified because we know overseas a large proportion unfortunately of victims are within aged care facilities.”

But Mr McDonald wouldn’t let it go so easily, asking why, when decisions during the pandemic have been made to benefit communities over individuals, would this not apply in aged care homes?

“I think again we have to rely on the health advice,” the Premier started. “What’s the advice that says leave them there and risk all of the other people?” the Q&A host cut in. “The health advice says assess the person’s condition,” Ms Berejiklian said firmly, “and also assess their choice on what their preference is given their condition so it’s not a hard and fast rule for every single person.”

She then took the opportunity to again take a swipe at Anglicare – and warn operators that they will be held to account if outbreaks happen in homes under their watch.

“There is a difference in the people who run these aged care facilities,” she stated. “We’ve had a number of instances in NSW where people there have been examples where things have been handled extremely well and others where things have not been handled well so we expect everyone who runs facilities… for anyone who manages homes for the most vulnerable or takes care of people who are the most vulnerable everybody has to step up and assume they are going to have an outbreak.. and then make sure they have got the steps in place to deal with it.”

The Premier also denied that the NSW Government had not been assertive in its approach to addressing virus outbreaks in aged care homes.

“The NSW health department made sure that we had various health experts, clinicians go in and provide support even though again as I say in a pandemic the role are blurred ordinarily. It’s the federal government that regulates the aged care industry but we’ve stepped up and made sure whatever we can do, we will do.”