Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Every day in the papers there is a report of a crisis in hospitals in New South Wales. I am sure someone will mention them; I will not go into it. I plead with the Greens: it is not too late to try to help the people of Townsville and North Queensland with this one hospital. I could go into every hospital up my way and tell you that they are already overcrowded. There are critical bed shortages and they are getting worse. But if you put these amendments in, things just have to get worse again. I can understand why the Labor Party would do this. They cannot manage money. They have to increase taxes, which is the hallmark of Labor governments. I understand that. They are very bad money managers. We only have to look at the last 10 months to see how pathetic they are at managing money and managing the economy. But I cannot understand why the two Independents and the Greens would want to make the public hospital system in my state of Queensland and my city of Townsville so much worse than it currently is. I plead with the Greens: please do not do this. Reject the amendments so that the already critical situation in places like the Townsville Hospital will not get worse.