Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I can see those Queensland senators sitting opposite. I rise today to take note of answers provided by the ministers. I would like to touch on the issue of hospitals, which Senator Brandis has just raised, and also the answers provided by Senator Conroy.

On the issue of Queensland hospitals, I did a little bit of research. I understand from comments made by Premier Bligh that Queensland’s elective surgery waiting lists are now the shortest in the country and that she will continue to do more. An extra $90 million is being invested into the Surgery Connect program during the next three years, with the first of up to 20,000 extra operations starting in June. Premier Bligh says that at least $15 million of the funding will be dedicated to providing surgery to children on the waiting list and that this investment will deliver up to 1,100 additional procedures for children every year. That means children who need operations, such as having their tonsils removed, will get their treatment more quickly.

The Premier says the government’s $10 billion health action plan delivered record numbers of doctors, nurses and allied health workers to Queensland public hospitals. There has been an increase of 6,267 nurses—from 21,911 to 27,689—and allied health workers have gone up from 6,934 to 9,068. I also understand that the Premier last month announced a new children’s emergency department on Brisbane’s north side to support the $1.1 billion Queensland Children’s Hospital that is being built in Brisbane’s south. The Premier launched a major new $250 million health building program and also a plan to train a team of 30 nurse practitioners to work in what she says are the state’s busiest emergency departments. So the Premier says that she has listened to senior doctors and nurses in public hospitals about how they can address the issues. I understand the package of measures included in the emergency department upgrade totals of $144.5 million in Brisbane, Logan, Redlands, Ipswich, Caboolture, Bundaberg and Toowoomba. New designated areas for children and their parents to wait for treatment away from adults under the influence are also to be added to the emergency department projects. If people are interested in looking at what the Queensland Labor government intends to do, they can get onto the Labor Party’s website and will find the relevant information there.

I would now like to move to the response provided by Senator Conroy with regard to broadband. We have this issue raised time and time again in this chamber—the issue of broadband to rural and regional Australia. Here we sit, again and again, having this topic raised. We know that the opposition left a legacy of 18 failed broadband plan attempts in their 11 years. They did not deliver to regional Australia; they did not deliver to rural Australia. Before the last federal election, the opposition were prepared to deliver high-speed broadband only to those people living in the five capital cities. And, what is more, they provided no safety net for Australia. As a result of the opposition’s inaction, their failed plans, Australia’s broadband performance is behind that of countries we consider our international peers. We know that Telstra admitted in July last year that two-thirds of the metropolitan areas and more than 50 per cent of people in regional areas could not get 12 megabits per second. (Time expired)