Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

He is visiting hospitals where the hardworking nurses that we are talking about in these bills are working. These are people that deserve better working conditions and yet they have been condemned by this government to the same practices that have delivered bad health outcomes by Labor governments over the last 10 years. The pouring of more money into problems, which is always Labor’s solution, is not the solution in health—without the reform of the system. We need structural reform. We do not need good money being poured after bad. Reforms need to be made to get better health and patient outcomes. This is a government which has to start thinking about the patients. We cannot continue in this country in the 21st century to have people dying on waiting lists and to have parents waiting a dozen hours overnight in emergency departments. This is a government which still condones waiting lists that are being doctored—that are publicly acknowledged as being doctored—and fraudulently put to the Commonwealth to extort funds from the Commonwealth to fund them. And the waiting lists grow longer and longer. No wonder nurses around the country—

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