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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was asked about the community response and the broader response to our health reform plan. Because the Leader of the Opposition was away last week in Central Australia, he left the shadow health spokesperson in charge of the Liberal Party’s response. Of course, this was always going to be a risky thing to do. The member for Dickson’s first response was to claim that doctors and nurses spent all their days on Facebook. This was an absolute insult to hardworking doctors and nurses, and he should be ashamed of himself for having that as his first response. To the member for Dickson’s credit, he then actually bothered to read the plan that had been announced, and he told 2UE and 2SM last Friday, ‘There are parts of this that are positive and that we could support.’ I would like to ask the member for Dickson or the Leader of the Opposition to tell us which parts they are.

The Leader of the Opposition returned from his time in Central Australia to declare that in fact he opposes all of the package. We are struggling to understand what the opposition’s alternative health policy is. Of course, there are many of us on this side of the House who remember what this Leader of the Opposition’s approach to health reform was when he was a minister. I do not think there is anyone on this side of the House who cannot remember the Mersey hospital. At the previous election, the then Minister for Health and Ageing had a plan for one hospital. Now that plan has been vastly expanded. The Leader of the Opposition now has a plan for about 20 or 30 hospitals, some in Queensland and some in New South Wales—not even 10 per cent of our public hospitals. This just is not good enough. He also said that he wants to revisit local hospital boards, to have every single hospital compete with each other for staff and for funding. This is a policy that is so far past its use-by date that the Leader of the Opposition should have left it in Fossil Creek, where he was last week, because that is where it belongs. He needs to come clean with the public. He needs to tell us what his view is on health reform. He was not prepared to reform the health system when he was the minister for nearly five years. Now he is the Leader of the Opposition and he should get out of our way and let us do the job in the nation’s interest.

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