Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the appropriation bills before the House: Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. I'm delighted to do so, but in doing so I want to express my frustration at the failed policies of this government and the fact that, whilst we are a wealthy society, we are by no means an equitable one. It's been almost five years since I've been a member of this House, since I was elected as the member for Macarthur, and I've seen, increasingly frustratingly, a lack of action on climate change, a lack of action on energy policy and a government that, as I've said, knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

In my own particular field of health care, we've seen a government that pays lip-service to public health policy, to preventative medicine, to preventative health. Whilst they have done well during the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen evidence of a lack of provision for the future and a lack of planning for the healthcare needs of our society. We've seen gap costs for high-level specialist care increase now to levels where it's really only affordable for the very wealthy. We've seen increasing difficulty in people accessing health care. Particularly in my electorate of Macarthur there are real problems in recruiting general practitioners to provide primary health care through our electorate and to people who have the highest need for health care. I've been constantly contacted by constituents and by general practitioners themselves saying it's very difficult to recruit doctors to work in some of the areas of highest need in my electorate of Macarthur. We've seen long waiting lists for hospital treatments and they've certainly blown out during the pandemic.

We have seen people who are struggling to access education. We have new schools in my electorate that have over 30 demountable classrooms. The playing fields have been taken up by demountable classrooms in the electorate. We've seen businesses who have—

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