Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Through the chair. It would still have been a wonderful outcome.

So let us just clear up why senators on the other side want to go into a political spin and, I believe, waste a lot of the Senate’s time on pulling these nonsense MPIs: it is so they can get up and bang on about the Western Australian election coming up this week. I would like to make a contribution on the Western Australian election this week, because three Western Australian senators spent most of their contributions in this debate talking about the election. Let us look at the election. It is 3½ years since the last one. It will be decided this Saturday—and, hopefully, on Saturday night Western Australians will discover who will be governing Western Australia.

But I want to talk about health in that state. Health is a very important thing. Nothing sickens me more than when I hear senators opposite, Australian senators, trying to insult the intelligence of all Western Australians and all Australians by saying that we have a third-class health system in Western Australia. I absolutely despise that. I feel sick in the stomach, because as part of the privilege of being an Australian senator I travelled to Papua New Guinea on a bilateral visit and, along with other senators, Liberal senators as well, I had the good fortune—I would not say the misfortune—to see actual Third World health systems. If you get invited into a hospital and you are looking at a child who is dying from AIDS lying on a cloth mattress, with no pillow, not even a sheet—