Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister please update the House on union campaigns in hospitals, particularly a scaremongering campaign at the Nepean Hospital in my electorate of Lindsay? What is his response?

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Roxon interjecting

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Snowdon interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Gellibrand is warned and so is the member for Lingiari!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the member for Lindsay for her question. Let me say not only that the Howard government is the best friend that Medicare has ever had but that the Howard government is the best friend that Australian nurses have ever had. Nurse numbers are up 11 per cent since 1999; there are 3,000 more nurse training places since 2005. There are now 5,000 nurses in general practice.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Byrne interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Holt is warned! The minister has the call and the minister will be heard.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the work of the Howard government, the great work of Australian nurses is now recognised through a Medicare rebate for the first time. As far as the government is concerned, we want nurses to be nurses; but members opposite want nurses to be pawns in political campaigns run by the ACTU. The ACTU’s notorious dirty tricks manual cites Nepean Hospital as a case study in how to run a political campaign out of a healthcare institution. I cite Workers Online from last December:

Workers at Nepean Hospital, the biggest workplace in the federal marginal seat of Lindsay ... are running the first workplace-based Rights at Work campaign in Australia. With a 3000 strong workforce and hundreds of patients and their families moving through each week, the potential for campaigners is extraordinary.

I can inform the House that at Nepean Hospital nurses have been pressured into attending union meetings, and at least one worker has been threatened with losing his job if he votes Liberal. For weeks at a time walls and fences have been used as billboards for union propaganda, and for weeks at a time the hospital looked more like a polling booth for just one candidate than a proper healthcare institution. I say to the patients at Nepean Hospital and other hospitals in Australia: if some odd-looking person with a stethoscope around his neck approaches you—

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Irwin interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fowler is warned!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

it might be Greg Combet masquerading as a doctor. If someone approaches you acting furtively with a pill bottle it might be Sharan Burrow masquerading as a nurse. In fact, a new peril is stalking the patients of Australia—Dr Death and Nurse Ratched—just like the new peril stalking the voters of Australia: Dr Death and Nurse Ratched sitting opposite.

The real question is this: why is the Leader of the Opposition, who claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer as his mentor, supporting the union dirty tricks campaign in Australian hospitals? In fact, on that topic, why has he just put two champion dirt-diggers on his staff, including one person who put the mental health of a Sydney family at risk by fabricating stories about them?

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Danby interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne Ports is warned!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask this question: was it Walt Secord who advised the Leader of the Opposition to claim that his productivity manual had been stolen when in fact it had been lost? June 14 was Fundamental Incompetence Day; yesterday, 19 June, ought to go down as Fundamental Dishonesty Day, with the Leader of the Opposition, advised by the dirty tricks merchants from the New South Wales Labor right, going out and peddling that blatant lie. What is pretty clear is this—move over St Kevin; the halo has been ripped off—the union thugs and the dirty tricks merchants from Hawker Britton are running this opposition.