Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the minister's intervention, which is, 'Please, don't continue.' I know it can be uncomfortable to hear, but the great challenge is that many of the speeches that we have heard from your side of parliament could simply have been lifted out of the UK House of Commons, which saw Labour MPs speaking blindly and blithely about the importance of an electronic health record just months before the whole thing collapsed. That is the only warning I give you.

Speaking as a clinician, I would love to have it working. Speaking as a clinician, I do not see why there cannot be better access to item numbers through both Medicare and PBS for public providers who are looking after the health of Australians. There are lots of easy gains, there are lots of easy wins, but it is not going to happen if we have the continued delays that we have seen from this government. You should know, Minister, about the cancelled meeting for lead clinicians. You should know about that. What is happening and why can they not meet? What are they dealing with? The summing-up of this debate is your chance, early in your portfolio, to tell us exactly where things are at and exactly where the hiccups are. Who was given the wrong specifications? What was provided back to the department that in the end could not be used? Why are we delaying meetings with clinicians? This should be the first group you meet with, not the last. These are simple questions that I put to the minister. I emphasise that the support for the concept of an electronic health record is on both sides of the chamber, but I would love to see more concern about where the project is heading overall. It is large, it is complex and it is expensive and there is a graveyard of well-intended but ultimately misguided attempts to develop this record. It will take collaboration and it will take time. Start small, do it slowly and sequence it right and we may be able to go where other nations have failed.

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