Aged care workers will receive two pre-election bonus payments worth up to $800 in total as the federal government seeks to claw back public support for its troubled pandemic response.
Ahead of a major speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced on Monday night that the bonus would be paid to more than 230,000 aged care workers in government-subsidised home care and to residential aged care staff providing “direct care, food or cleaning services”.
The first payment of up to $400 will be made this month with the second due in early May. The latest date the election can be held is 21 May.
The payments were immediately criticised by the Health Services Union (HSU), which labelled the gesture as “too little, too late” when the workforce was in crisis.
“Trinkets are not required when diamonds are needed,” the HSU secretary, Gerard Hayes, told Guardian Australia.
“From day one, they have not understood aged care, they have never understood the rollout of the vaccine, they haven’t understood the booster shots, and they have never understood the workforce crisis we are facing – and they never complied with the outcomes of the royal commission.
“People are leaving the industry, they are being paid $22 an hour, they are leaving for retail and hospitality and this is the best they can do? It’s a disgrace.”
The HSU has launched a case in the Fair Work Commission seeking pay rises for aged care workers of 25%, or at least $5 more an hour.
While providers and the unions have reached an in-principle agreement on a pay rise, the federal government has yet to declare whether it supports the wage claim.
The bonus payments will be modelled on the $393m aged care workforce retention payments that were granted in the early stages of the pandemic in 2020. The bonus will be paid on a pro rata basis depending on hours worked, with each payment worth a maximum of $400.
The $209m package comes as the government begins the political year reeling from a public backlash to its response to the Omicron wave of the virus over summer, fuelled by a shortage of rapid antigen tests, soaring case numbers, and workforce and supply chain disruptions caused by the mass furloughing of staff.
A Newspoll published in the Australian on Monday showed support for the government tracking at its lowest level since the leadership spill in September 2018 that saw Malcolm Turnbull deposed as leader, with Labor ahead of the Coalition 56% to 44% on a two-party-preferred basis.
The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said the “message” in the Newspoll was that “Australians continue to do it tough through Covid”.
“The pandemic has gone on for two years. Omicron disrupted many people’s summer plans, holiday plans, and there is that frustration out there. So we’ll continue to work hard for the public, both on the health front and on the economic front,” Frydenberg told ABC radio.
But the treasurer was also forced to defend the government’s economic response, after the NSW treasurer, Matt Kean, said on Sunday he was “disappointed” the federal government had not matched its latest business support package.
In response, Frydenberg said the government “can’t just keep writing the cheques”.
“You actually have to take some tough decisions. And now with the vaccination rates well over 90%, Australia is well placed … to live safely with Covid, despite the challenges it poses.”
Talking up the country’s health outcomes to mark the start of the political year, Morrison will tell the press club on Tuesday that the government payment would support the aged care workforce “to continue to care for older Australians through the pandemic”.
“None of our health outcomes would be possible without the hard work, long hours and dedicated care offered by our frontline health and aged care workforce,” Morrison will say, according to draft excerpts of his speech released on Monday.
“Their resilience over the past two years has been inspiring.”
The move to target the aged care workforce comes amid widespread frustration within the sector about the government’s preparedness for the latest Covid-19 outbreak, with providers concerned about the lack of rapid antigen tests available for surveillance testing, and the pressures being placed on an already stretched workforce.
Morrison has insisted that the commonwealth has fulfilled its responsibilities to the sector by providing rapid tests to residential aged care facilities when needed to contain outbreaks, and by focusing on the vaccine booster program for residents and workers.
The latest figures from the Department of Health show there were 23,900 active Covid cases within the aged care system across 1,261 residential aged care facilities. That included more than 14,000 staff and close to 9,000 residents.
Since July, there have been 657 Covid deaths within these facilities.
The health and aged care minister, Greg Hunt, on Monday said Australia had recorded one of the lowest death rates in the sector in the world and 60% of the reported deaths were people already in palliative care.
Hunt said that as of Monday, 99% of residential aged care facilities had taken part in the government’s booster program, despite criticism that the rollout had been too slow to prevent deaths.
He also said the Newspoll figures reflected the fact that it had been “a difficult period” for many Australians and the country had not been “unspared” by Omicron.
“I think that it is important to acknowledge, to understand and to recognise from a government perspective, our task, our mission is to continue to work to keep Australians safe,” Hunt said.
“We recognise the challenges and the hardship people have faced, but also when it actually comes to keeping Australians safe, the Coalition and the prime minister Scott Morrison are the ones that, in our view, are best placed to do that.”
Morrison’s $2.2bn research package
Morrison will also use the traditional curtain-raising speech to announce a $2.2bn “research commercialisation action plan” that will include a $1.6bn acceleration fund aimed at linking academic research to industry.
An extra $296m will fund 1,800 “industry focused” PhDs and 800 fellowships, while the CSIRO will receive an extra $250m to expand its Main Sequence Ventures program, which backs start-up companies and helps commercialise Australian research.
The $2.2bn commitment is over 10 years, and includes $2bn in new money, which was allocated in the mid-year budget update as part of $15.9bn in expenditure for decisions “taken but not yet announced”.
Morrison will say the plan would target areas where Australia had significant comparative advantage, including in medical products, food and beverage, recycling and clean energy, resources technology and critical minerals processing, defence and space.
“85% of Australian research is rated at or above world standard, yet we continue to underperform in achieving commercialisation outcomes,” Morrison will say.
“We need to accelerate the forging of linkages between Australian industry and Australian university researchers and we need to find and develop a new breed of researcher entrepreneurs in Australia.”
Morrison said the $1.6bn acceleration fund would address a so-called valley of death, where early-stage research is frequently not progressed to later stages of development because of the risk and uncertainty about commercial returns.
“We know this is not insurmountable,” he will say. “The fund will allow Australian innovators to access funding opportunities for each stage of their project provided they can continue to prove project viability and commercial potential. Industry involvement and engagement is required at every stage.”
Morrison said the industry-focused PhDs and fellowships were aimed at addressing “people and culture”, pointing to the fact that 40% of Australia’s researchers work in private industry, below the OECD average.
“This, together with low mobility between industry and the university sectors, leads to culture and capability gaps that reduce the ability of Australian businesses to innovate.
“This $296m investment aims to fundamentally reshape the workforce of Australia’s universities and career options, encouraging mobility and collaboration between university researchers and industry.”
The government focus on commercialising research comes after the Coalition came under fire for its decision to veto six humanities-based projects that had been awarded Australian Research Council grants.
The acting education minister, Stuart Robert, rejected the grants on the basis they “do not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money nor contribute to the national interest”.
