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

The only problem was that the Leader of the Opposition, as the health minister, said all of these things about electronic health records and failed to deliver one iota.

I can tell you that the member for Dickson is also on the record as offering bipartisan support for e-health. He even had a swipe at his own leader. Last September he said that the lack of e-health was ‘a very poor reflection of the last decade of discussion’. I wonder who was in government for the last decade? The member for Dickson also said in March:

… Nicola Roxon and I don’t always have a perfect made in heaven relationship, but nonetheless, when I first sat down with Nicola coming into this portfolio only six months ago I gave her an undertaking that we would—on the issue of e-health—provide bipartisan support …

There goes that offer! How erratic are they, in that year after year they could commit to e-health, when they got into opposition they could commit to e-health and then, last week, they slashed half a billion dollars from their budget for this necessary revolutionary change to our healthcare system? One day they are for e-health; one day they are against it. It is pretty hard to know what the Leader of the Opposition thinks, but we certainly know what he did about e-health—absolutely nothing.

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