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

If you would listen, you would know that I am now talking about the Townsville Hospital—and, last time I checked, it was open. There is $250 million going there. I would like the member for Dickson to ask the member for Herbert to come and say whether he would like us to pull that money out. To add to the frustration of having a 15-minute list of problems with not a single solution being put on the table by the Liberal Party, it takes a bit of cheek for the member for Dickson to have this mostly confected outrage about consulting with the community when we have committed to a GP superclinic in his electorate. We consulted in his electorate, but the member could not be bothered to come along to the consultation. The construction work has begun, but he could not be bothered to come to the opening. Obviously he is too embarrassed to turn up in his electorate. He holds the seat with a slender margin and he may not even run in that electorate in the future, so I think it is a bit rich for him to come in here and criticise us.

Let us get this absolutely straight. When the previous government were in power, we criticised them for blaming every problem in the health system on the state governments. Now that they are in opposition, every problem in the public hospitals is instantly our fault. Let us not be so simplistic about this. There are a range of problems in the health system. We can invest money, we can change programs and we can improve accountability—and I will in due course give you a list of some of the things that have improved. The member has the gall to stand here and say that every decision we have made has made public hospitals worse. Let us look at a few of the decisions. How does it make public hospitals worse to invest 50 per cent more money in the delivery of services through our public hospital systems? How does it make public hospitals worse to deliver 41,000 extra elective surgery procedures which would not have been provided if the Commonwealth did not give that money? How does it make public hospitals worse in the electorate of the member for Forde when our $700 million investment in emergency departments is putting $44 million into the emergency department there? How does it make public hospitals worse to continue to invest in elective surgery equipment and new theatres? How does it make matters worse at Calvary Hospital when there is a new elective surgery theatre and more people are now having their elective surgery done?

The member for Dickson is living in some sort of fairyland. He thinks we can wave a wand and everything will be fixed on day one. The truth is that the public understand how complex this debate is. Even when we go to hospitals that are having challenges—hospitals that are having difficulty handling swine flu cases, or hospitals like Royal North Shore Hospital, which has historically had problems—the clinicians, the nurses, the psychiatrists and the GPs who service the local area come to us time and time again and say: ‘We want to be part of this process. These are the things that we think are good in the Health Reform Commission recommendations and these are the things we think should be different. Thank you, Prime Minister, for coming and talking to us about this.’ I think it is just nonsense to pretend that these difficult problems do not merit consultation with the community, consultation with the clinicians, consultation with the nurses and consultation with the specialists who are delivering these services. I do not think people will take the member for Dickson seriously when he just stands up and lists the problems. In a particular instance, he has fundamentally misled the parliament. He said there is a protest in Cootamundra about the Rudd Labor government for a decision made by an area health service run by the New South Wales government.

See this speech in context