Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

All of the issues are important. What is staggering, and what the Leader of the Opposition will have to answer is: why is it, when we talk about the great challenges facing our nation, that we get an erudite lecture about the economy but nothing about what he wants to do as the leader to fix our health system, to fix our education system, to build broadband infrastructure or anything else like that? There is no point in the Leader of the Opposition coming in here and giving us a lecture on the economy when he is directing his senators to blow an enormous hole in every single measure that has been put forward in the Senate—particularly in health. If the Liberal Party is going to continue to oppose over $6 billion worth of expenditure in the Senate, you cannot expect people to take you seriously when you give us a lecture about inflation.

Let us talk through some of the things in the health area in particular. Obviously none of them are significant enough for the Leader of the Opposition to deign to talk about. He is not interested in the way that we might rebuild our hospitals. He is not interested in dental care. He says he is interested in pensioners, but he does not care that he has instructed his senators to vote against $290 million for dental care, predominantly for pensioners. I do think it is fair enough for us to ask why, when you want to debate the great challenges facing the nation, we have absolute silence on health. Why have we had nine major interviews in the last 24 hours that have not mentioned health at all? We had a 15-minute speech from the Leader of the Opposition which did not mention health, education or climate change at all.

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