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

I thank the honourable member for her question and her interest in health matters and providing health services to her electorate. There has been an important development in the GP superclinic program. I want to update the House and the Australian people on what is a very important outcome in the GP superclinic program, but I will come to that in just a moment.

This is a program which, along with the creation of 12 great big new bureaucracies in health, will be hanging around the necks of the Labor Party for a generation to come. This program was a complete, outrageous waste of taxpayers' money—$650 million was spent on the GP superclinic program. They only opened half the number they promised. Some of them are still vacant paddocks six or seven years later—not seeing a patient, not even having started construction. They were set up in competition—using money borrowed on behalf of taxpayers—with existing GP practices. That is how bad this policy was. They diverted money away from important health services and put it into this new health bureaucracy.

But let me come back to the major development. During the break, the Leader of the Opposition was with the shadow health minister at the opening of the West Melbourne GP superclinic—four years after it was promised, so in itself not a bad achievement!

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