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

Parkes is here, because I understand that he and a couple of his colleagues are very enthusiastic for us to have GP superclinics in their electorates. What I suggest is that you lobby your shadow minister either to get to a position where the Liberal Party will support this investment or to suggest that the money that we have promised to his electorate could be put into yours. If the shadow minister wants us to do that, we are more than happy to do it.

But the thing that has been really outrageous and, frankly, pretty disappointing about the shadow minister’s MPI is that in less than five minutes he had run out of anything to say about health. In less than five minutes he was already on to his theories about spin doctoring and his theories about other things. We have not heard anything yet from this shadow minister about what he would do to fix the health system. We have not heard anything from any of the Liberal Party about a single policy in health. They do not know whether they are going to support ours. They are not prepared to own up properly to the legacy that they have left us with. Again, we made an announcement last week of 175 new GPs across the country, and nine of them are likely to be in the training area that covers the shadow minister’s electorate. He is not even sure whether he welcomes that or not. He is not prepared to be honest about the fact that the member for Warringah and the member for Bradfield—the previous Leader of the Opposition—admitted that they made mistakes in capping the number of those places in GP training, but he is not even sure whether he welcomes those places.

It is very interesting to me that, in addition to the people on this side of the House who are very interested in hospitals, we have a number of members whom I have been engaging with directly—I even met with the member for Riverina earlier today—who do have serious problems in their hospitals. I do not deny that there is a lot of work that we have to do to fix this. There are problems in the local member’s community with GPs being trained overseas. We are working to fix those problems, but we cannot do it all at once. We have to take it step by step.

We are proud of putting $1 billion into our hospitals, putting $600 million into elective surgery, creating more GP training places, getting extra nurses trained and setting up a vast range of other supports for rural services in particular, but we are going to get further changes right and we are not ashamed about taking the time to get proper advice, to do it clearly, and we are not ashamed about negotiating with the states and territories to demand more from them if we invest more through the healthcare agreements. We have been absolutely upfront that we want transparency, that we want strong reporting and that we want improved health outcomes, and the commitment that we made at the election was that, if we cannot get the states and territories to sign on to those changes, we would go back to the public asking for their approval to take over financial control of the hospitals. The deadline we set for that is the middle of next year.

For some reason, the shadow minister is too busy to even hear the answers. He has gone off to do some media interview because that is more important than his own matter of public importance. He does not want to hear that we are working exactly as we promised and we are following those standards. I think it is disappointing. I think we have some serious issues in health that we have to confront. We have some big changes that we are going to have to be prepared to make. We have big investments that are going to be very difficult in these financial circumstances but are necessary for the community. But we have a shadow minister who is not even prepared to stay and listen to his colleagues who are going to debate the matter of public importance. He is not even prepared to stay and hear what else is going on.

Those opposite always want to use the worst examples from our state colleagues—and sadly, on occasion, they give us examples that those opposite can use—but I would like to take the chance to give some good examples. As a result of the elective surgery money that the Commonwealth provided to each state and territory, Victoria committed to undertaking 9,400 elective surgery operations this year. Victoria reported in their parliament today that already, two months ahead of time, because of that extra assistance that the Commonwealth has provided, 9,918 extra elective surgery operations have been performed. That Commonwealth money has meant that nearly 10,000—in fact, 500 more than were promised—elective surgery procedures have been undertaken. That means that in my electorate, in the electorate of the member for Maribyrnong and in the electorate of the member for Deakin—in all of the Victorian electorates—more people have had their hip surgery done, their knee surgery done or their cataract surgery done because we put the money on the table.

Why is it that the shadow minister does not want to use those examples? Why doesn’t he want to come in and say, ‘When the states are performing well, we should give them more to give them some reward payment’? Why doesn’t he want to engage in that sort of constructive debate? He just wants to complain about the states and use every bad example instead of, when we invest money and the states can deliver better services, being prepared to come in here and stand up and say that they are doing well. He is too busy out there doing his media, and he is the one who had the gall to suggest that our government is being run like The Hollowmen.

This is someone who thinks this matter is so important that the parliament should allocate an hour to debate it but he is only prepared to stay to hear himself talk. I thought the Leader of the Opposition had a good opinion of himself, but that attitude obviously flows through to all of his shadow ministers. The shadow minister only wants to listen to himself speak, not to get any real answers from anybody else. And I am getting a little bit sick of some of the pious displays from the shadow minister. He welcomed the initiatives and the comments I made today about the insulin pumps and Diabetes Day, which are very important—I notice there are still members from Diabetes Australia here—and that is good because it is something that very many members, particularly backbenchers, have been actively engaged in for a long time. But you cannot do that and pretend to work together and then stand up and put on this appalling display and not be prepared to listen to what it is we are doing.

I challenge the shadow minister: if he thinks that the Commonwealth has not done enough, does he want us to take back the billion dollars that we have already given to public hospitals? Does the shadow minister want us to take back the money we have paid for all of those extra surgeries? Does he want us to stop funding an extra 170 GPs in the next two years? Does he want us to not go ahead with the more than 1,000 nursing places that are going to start as of next year—90 already this year, 1,094 next year? We already know he does not want us to proceed with our binge drinking strategy, so I am not even going to ask that hypothetically because he has been disinterested in these changes. I am presuming he does not want to stop us screening people for bowel cancer, a big investment that we made in the budget. Why do none of these major investments in health get a mention from the shadow minister? It is just the same old same old Dutton dressed up as lamb! (Time expired)

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