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

or the GP superclinic, because these things will improve the situation in her electorate.

The member for Parkes is here, a member who has had significant problems in his local hospital in Dubbo—and we are not apologists for the states; we want those problems to be fixed—and he is lobbying me for a GP superclinic. So do not come in here as the shadow health spokesperson and say that nothing we are doing is delivering. I am sorry that you happened to be here for that, Member for Parkes—we take seriously the request that has been made; it is a very good proposal from Gunnedah—but, if your shadow health spokesperson says that everything we are doing is terrible, at the same time as all the members on the backbench are saying, ‘Can we please have one of these in our electorate; they’re so terrible that we really want one,’ no-one is going to believe him.

I think that is the fundamental problem for the member for Dickson: nobody believes his position on anything anymore. The alcopops debate has really been the peak of that. He was vehemently arguing against it week after week after week—‘We’re never going to support it; we won’t do it’—then had to execute that humiliating backdown and make an announcement that they would support it. He cannot bring himself to come in here now and say that it is a good idea.

He absolutely defends the strength of the seat of Dickson and how much he loves the area, and then the second that it gets to be a hard fight for him locally he starts to indicate that he is looking around to run in another seat. This is the person who, according to media reports, was reduced to tears when he thought that the Labor candidate had beaten him in the election. But there is no doubt that he has never shed a tear for Medicare. He has never shed a tear for anybody who cannot get access to public hospital services when they want them. He has never put his mind at all to what an alternative policy might look like. We see this with the CPRS. We see this with education. This is an opposition that is so obsessed with its internal leadership problems that it cannot put forward any sort of policy proposal. I think that is absolutely pathetic.

What I would like to do in the remaining time available is to talk about some of the communities that are benefiting from our investments—

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