Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Far be it from me to offer advice to the new backbencher, my good friend the member for Hawke, on this motion, but it does remind me of another situation where Labor have gone out and claimed a victory before it happened. I was reflecting on this, and remembering when the then opposition leader introduced himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger as the next Prime Minister of Australia. It was a little cringeworthy, but there's a lesson to be learned: don't get out too early and claim the win before it has happened. That might be something to say here.

Very clearly, we're talking about delivery of 58 of these urgent care clinics but, by their own admission, it's only 16. I would point out, as have others previously, that eight of those are merely rebadged urgent care clinics that were delivered by the Victorian state government. So we're down to eight and we're off by 50-odd, but it's a good start. I join in the condemnation that has been engaged in gleefully on my side in pointing out this error in factual content in this celebration. But, firstly, I just want to sum up what I believe to be the government's defence against claims that they haven't actually done what they said they were going to do. When I go through it, at best it comes down to this: our promises were so watery, tempered and vacuous that how could you possibly hold us to account? That seems to be the defence here, 'We stumbled into this.' The first announcement was that they were going to deliver it in the next year and then they doubled down by saying, 'Yes, we'll deliver these by the beginning of the financial year 2023-2024.' So it's, 'We stumbled into this, and near enough is good enough.' Off by 50, but 50 out of 58 seems to be the defence that we have.

In seriousness, and not making light of it, I come from a region known for its health care, where health care is the largest employer in town and has been for a long time. Toowoomba services much of south-western Queensland. We draw people up from the Lockyer Valley and also service a lot of northern New South Wales. People come to our region for health care because we have outstanding health facilities, and we have done so for quite a long time. But I guess this raises the point that this was a good promise to make—this was a very good promise for an opposition to make going into an election, because it matters. Looking after health care matters, and I think that's important to acknowledge.

In my hometown I do see ambulance ramping and I see people choosing to go to the emergency department rather than to a GP, and I see those things on a regular basis. These are problems that we must face. I know that it's happening in Toowoomba, in Queensland and around Australia—these are challenges that are felt. I ran my last survey recently and, once again, the issues that came up in Toowoomba were crime, the cost of living and health care. People move to Toowoomba expecting great health care to be provided continuously, so when the then opposition made these commitments they were good commitments. I think people expected that when they became the government, when they had the power to deliver on their promises, that they would. If I were just walking in here today and read this statement then I would think: 'Fantastic, they did! Look at this: 58 of these have been delivered. What a fantastic outcome!' But of course we find that only 16 have been delivered and that eight of those were actually just rebadged and were delivered by somebody else.

I fear I'm putting a bit of a wet blanket on the celebrations by the government, but they are premature. What we can say is that this is the continuation of a theme from this government: making great promises and then failing to deliver them when they have the power to deliver them. Of course, there's not a person in Australia who hasn't heard the number 275. That was a significant promise made 97 times—that's the other number we all know, $275 repeated 97 times. It's a promise that was made and a promise that wasn't delivered. There were cheaper mortgages, an amazing promise for any government to make, 'We're going to make mortgages cheaper.' My favourite one, though, was the now Treasurer making the claim that there was much they could do about the cost of living, including reducing the cost of groceries. What an incredible promise to make and what an incredible promise to break.

In all these areas, these are important issues; these are issues that are important to Australians. Labor recognised that they were important but they have now walked away from commitments to deliver them. I don't think they realise just how important they were to Australians but they were important to their campaign to win government, and this falls into farce when it is interrogated in any way.

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