Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is pretty easy for you to stand up for your union mates—that is the problem. The unionisation of the public hospital system is half the problem. Earlier, I carefully said, ‘workforce issues’, but, if you like, I will spell it out plainly: unionisation in the hospital system is causing extended waiting lists, and the staff hate it. The staff want to look after the patients. You know as well as I do that the first responsibility of medical staff is to the patient. They are such caring people, but they are held back by all these rules. You go in the operating theatre, where there are 14 people, and somebody says, ‘Oh, I better do this job—I will tidy this up,’ and another person rushes over and says, ‘Don’t you do that; that is my job.’ That is no way to run an operating theatre. It is just wrong.

I have used this contribution to appeal to the government. Let us not get off the subject, which we all just did, but let us understand what this appeal is about. Minister Roxon, we need a PET scanner in North Queensland. We need it sooner rather than later and we need it to be part of the very important medical diagnostic imaging that is now available in this country.

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