Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Moreton just needs to button his lips!

Labor's blatant waste of taxpayer dollars in our healthcare system is absolutely outrageous. Let's put the facts on the table. They spent $463,000 to do a study on a fat tax—on junk food—when they had already ruled it out. They spent $236,000 on an informative Facebook page that actually gained a whopping 244 likes. I cannot do the figures but I think that is a very excessive amount of money for 244 likes. They also spent $650 million on the infamous GP superclinics, and we heard earlier that of the 66 promised clinics only 33 were delivered.

The previous Labor government were more interested in putting bureaucrats in front of paper than in putting the nurses and doctors in front of the patients. Instead of delivering on healthcare promises they stood around and talked about it. The Labor government, as we know, is big on promises and very bad on delivering them. This government, however, is it committed to ensuring that our precious health dollars are spent in the most efficient way possible, ensuring that every dollar is directed towards improving patient outcomes. We are ending the wasteful and inefficient spending in the health portfolio that occurred under Labor.

Mostly we hear of the opposition's objections to our plans for health care. We very rarely hear of any plans that they come up with to improve health care. We heard from the member for Lingiari; he was whingeing and moaning about the co-payment but, in actual fact, he voted for one. So Labor has left the coffers dry. We want to make sure that the money that is there can be spent—

Ms Burke interjecting—

Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—

Mr Deputy Speaker, they should be told to stop interjecting!

But anyway: Labor does not have a plan. All it does is want to spend, spend, spend and whinge, whinge, whinge. We all know that Labor cannot be trusted with money, we know they cannot be trusted with credit cards and we know they cannot be trusted with getting this country on track. That is why we are here. We have to clean up their mess time after time. We are doing it again and this rubbish about Medicare is just, as I said—rubbish. Medicare is not under threat—only from those opposite!

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