Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Well, there are two parts to this. As I said yesterday—no—

Opposition members interjecting—

Each application was assessed by the department against the mandatory and substantive criteria outlined in the ITA documentation, and all MRI licences allocated under the expansion round met the department's criteria. And, as I said in the House yesterday, the final decisions were signed off by the minister. This is very interesting—absolutely. This is very interesting, because I've been doing a little bit of research into historic processes in this space, and—

An honourable member interjecting—

I was hoping he might intervene! This morning the Leader of the Opposition gave an interview in South Australia, where he referred to what the Labor Party did. He made four errors in one minute, in one answer on this. Apart from misrepresenting what we said yesterday, he said that Labor went through a process and these matters were determined as they were. But, in fact, we have gone back, and we know from the ANAO report that they were determined by the minister. He also said: 'People weren't making a profit by definition of an MRI machine in a hospital. Labor awarded these licences to public hospitals.'

I go to the member for Sydney's media release of 1 November 2012. The member for Sydney announced 11 licences in South Australia. I will list some of them: Dr Jones and Partners, Tennyson Centre; Adelaide Diagnostic Imaging, Adelaide area; Adelaide Diagnostic Imaging, Woodville; Dr Jones and Partners, South Terrace; one in North Terrace, in Adelaide; Benson Radiology, Salisbury; and Benson Radiology, North Adelaide. All of these show that what the Leader of the Opposition said this morning on this was absolute bunkum. He said that the difference is that Labor awarded these licences to public hospitals that went through processes, so people weren't making a profit by definition. That may be why the ANAO looked at what Labor did and slammed the member for Sydney to not only—

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