The new year should finally bring a comprehensive care reform. In any case, an interim report should be available by the end of January or the beginning of February, announced the turquoise negotiator, ÖVP club chairman August Wöginger, in an APA interview. Then it goes into the concrete elaboration. “We are in the middle of the negotiations and they are going very well.”
The working groups on the care reform meet intensively, assured Wöginger. It is about better support for caring relatives, a personnel offensive including a nursing apprenticeship, sustainable financing of the nursing system and the promotion of nursing at home.
The care reform was delayed by the need to deal with the corona pandemic. Wöginger defended the fact that massive contact restrictions will apply again from today's Stefanitag. When asked whether this would not cause a “traffic jam” at family reunions on December 24th and 25th, Wöginger explained that the aim was to reduce social contacts at all. “We don't do it out of joke and frenzy”, the greatest risk of infection is in the private sector. The number of infected people is simply too high, so this lockdown must now be carried out.
Wöginger believes that the fact that you can go skiing in this lockdown – the federal government has left the decision to the federal states – is justified: “We are a nation of skiers”, many have a ski slope on their doorstep, which is why they want at least the local population to use the slopes can, “understandable and comprehensible”, said the turquoise club boss. “What's more, when it is announced in Vienna that the ice rink at Rathausplatz will open and that you can take the subway here,” Wöginger couldn't help but point out the red capital.
A corona vaccination obligation, as his Upper Austrian party colleague, Governor Thomas Stelzer, advocates, is not an issue for Wöginger: “There will be no mandatory vaccination,” he assured. The first vaccinations will start tomorrow, Sunday. Wöginger appealed urgently to the population to use the offer in the next few months. The vaccine had been tried on tens of thousands of people and approved by the authorities, he tried to allay concerns.
One of the loudest vaccination skeptics is FPÖ club boss Herbert Kickl, who recently tightened his tone significantly. It can be said that with the SPÖ and the NEOS there are “two constructively critical opposition parties”, but one party “that is simply against everything and rejects everything and does not make any suggestions – that is the FPÖ with Kickl at the top” . But he believes that there are “two camps” in the FPÖ, namely the “Kickl troop” and the supporters of party leader Norbert Hofer, whom Wöginger specifically excluded from his criticism.
When asked about the fact that the FPÖ was the former coalition partner of the ÖVP, Wöginger said: “It is always the location that determines the point of view.” But saying no alone is still not enough. In any case, Wöginger does not regret the turquoise-blue collaboration, because it “worked very well for a large part” until the Ibiza scandal.
Wöginger raves about the current partner, the Greens, as always, and he does not fear that the time after Corona could bring more conflicts between the two parties: “Anyone who can cope with this pandemic and economic crisis so well together can do everyone else Work through topics and resolve them together. “
