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

I do thank the member for Braddon for his question. Again, I congratulate him on leading the fight to stop the state Labor government’s downgrading of the Mersey hospital in Tasmania. Let me say this: to the extent that the state Labor government’s health plan involves upgrading one community’s hospital by downgrading another community’s hospital, it is a bad plan and it should be blocked. Bad plans by the state governments should be resisted by good local members like the member for Braddon.

Let me say again that the people of Devonport, La Trobe, Kentish, Sheffield and Ulverstone deserve a hospital of their own. They should not be forced to go 60 kilometres up the road to gain access to acute hospital services. That is why the Howard government has put a plan in place to save the Mersey hospital. The Commonwealth will fund the hospital, the community will control the hospital and the hospital will deliver the same range of services that have been safely and effectively delivered at the hospital for many years. That is the Howard government’s plan. And when it was announced, didn’t all hell break loose! We had the Leader of the Opposition, no less, describing it as ‘an absolutely rotten way to conduct the business of a federation’. We now know that he thinks the right way to conduct the business of a federation is to engage in secret negotiations with the state government, with a state government imposed Friday deadline—just the sort of thing he used to do when he was the Dr Death of Queensland. And, just like the only real job he has ever had, yet again he is taking instructions from the state premiers.

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