Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just say that the tirade from those two gentlemen opposite is what I have come to expect from them. Unlike when they were in government, when they singularly failed to address the issue of health care for Defence Force families, we went to the last election with a commitment, an undertaking, to progressively extend free basic medical and dental care to the spouses and children of Australian Defence Force personnel—note, Mr Deputy Speaker: ‘progressively extend’. We sought to focus in the first instance on those people in regional and remote communities, and that is exactly what we have done. Rather than, as they would, make an undertaking which they had no intention of delivering on, we are committed to this process. We have said that this is a pilot process. We will take lessons from this so we can work out how to properly extend this measure across the Defence Force. It is very important that whatever we do is not only sustainable but cost efficient and cost effective.

What they would have us do is throw good money after bad. As they would know, in Townsville and Darwin we are committed to two superclinics. Why would we want to put two clinics side by side? What we intend to do, and what we are doing, is work with the Department of Health and Ageing and with Minister Roxon to see how we can combine the services we are committed to in those two areas to provide these medical services.

See this speech in context