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

Thank you to the member for Deakin. It is great to have a great member back in Deakin. He is a good man. He is working hard for his electorate already. He is very, very concerned about the health needs of the constituents in his electorate. I knew that he had an interest in this electronic health record, or the PCEHR, as it is known.

I knew that we should try and answer this question in a meaningful way, so I said to my department, 'Let's work out on a percentage basis how many of his constituents can turn up to an emergency department and have their electronic health record accessed on the computer system there.' The first thing, of course, was to establish how many people are in his electorate: 126,672, according to the latest census. But there was a problem. There was a big problem. The department said, 'Minister, we cannot provide you with a percentage figure.' I said: 'Surely it's easy. We now know the population. We want to know how many people can access the computer system in the public hospital when they turn up'—not a big ask, I thought. So I said to the department, 'Please, we have to work harder on this.' They said, 'Minister, it can't be done.' I said, 'Let's apply more resources to it.' In any case, they came back to me and said, 'Minister, the reason that it can't be done is that the former government forgot to talk to the hospitals or the doctors about how these systems should work in the public hospitals,' so the answer of course is that zero, not one, of those 126,000 people who might turn up to the local public hospital in the member for Deakin's electorate can get their record accessed on the computer system within that hospital.

The level of incompetence knows no bounds when it comes to the Health portfolio during the time of the previous Labor government. The previous minister looks bewildered. She looks bewildered and befuddled. But it is true, Tanya. It is true. You forgot to talk to the doctors and hospitals.

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