Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

How dare the member for Gellibrand stand there and say that the government has done nothing when all these things have happened through this government’s efforts. There were 650,000 GP care plans put in place in the last financial year. How dare she say nothing has been done. How dare she scorn the work of those GPs and the benefits the plans will deliver to their patients. More than 250,000 team care plans were put in place last year and more than half a million allied health consultations were delivered for people with chronic diseases and complex care needs last year, thanks to the policy of this government. How dare the member for Gellibrand stand up and say that none of that counts, that none of that matters.

It suggests ignorance, partisanship and a sheer reluctance to take people seriously that the member for Gellibrand comes up and engages in this utterly vacuous political badinage. It really is utterly empty. It is very hard to take the Leader of the Opposition seriously as a credible alternative Prime Minister when he has this kind of performance from the putative health minister under any future Labor government.

I know what will happen tonight when new and improved policies are announced to address issues that have been raised from time to time. She will say, ‘We thought of it first.’ Oh yeah, right! Sure! Yeah, sure, you were the first person to think of diabetes and you were the first person to think of allied health professionals helping people with chronic and complex conditions that were impacting on their general health!

None of it can be taken seriously until we actually have a few concrete policies from members opposite. Anyone can stand up and complain. Anyone can say, ‘Oh, an AIHW report has said this.’ Anyone can say, ‘If the world were different, people might not need to go to hospital.’ The challenge is to actually come up with ways of doing better which are economically responsible and which are consistent with the personal freedom expected by citizens in a great democracy such as this.

That is the challenge, but until such time as we see some serious policy from members opposite the member for Gellibrand can witter on all she likes about increasing rates of diabetes and about the increase in obesity. She can talk all she likes about challenges and prevention but, without some concrete policies, it is all absolutely empty. It is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. The only policy in this area that we have seen from members opposite over the last few years is Medicare Gold, a policy that was utterly discredited at the last election and was subsequently denounced as a turkey by no less a person than the then President of the Australian Labor Party. That is the only serious health policy we have had from members opposite in the last 11 years. I have to say that, on the evidence of speech after empty speech and cliche-ridden talk from the shadow minister, they are not going to do any better in 2007.

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