Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I take the interjection. It does seem that there is a sense of the Labor Party ducking for cover on health—and well may they duck for cover with 31,000 people on the waiting list. The greatest litmus test of how a government is working is its capacity to provide basic services. We can see in Queensland that it is all lost; there is no capacity to provide basic services.

Today I heard Senator Ludwig talking about the best national partnership for health and referring, I suppose, to the federal government picking up the tab for Queensland Health because they are so completely incompetent—but I do not know whether one lot of competence is going to be fixed by another lot of incompetence. I will tell you what the best national partnership is for health: it is the Liberal-National partnership. That is the best partnership for health. That is the best partnership that will actually deliver an outcome.

All we have got in Queensland at the moment is a mountain of debt—$74 billion worth of debt. How on earth can they provide anything or do anything except service their interest bill? This is the sort of fiasco that we have got. Queensland Health has been the epitome of a fiasco. Dr Patel and Bundaberg Hospital—all these things light up in infamy—and there is a litany of other issues. There is the lady who had a child between Emerald and Rockhampton. Unfortunately, the child passed away. Why? Because they could not get access to a hospital. There are these sorts of issues. There is the fact that our ambulances are bouncing around between out-services because they cannot get access. They are being denied access because there is not the capacity to look after the basic delivery of services to the people of Queensland.

We can see that hospitals are the absolute core of security. People want that sense that if they have got a pain in their chest they have a better than a 50-50 chance of seeing a doctor. But what do we have in Queensland? What do the Queensland government do when it comes to fixing up hospitals? They build a football stadium. That is what you do when health services are falling to pieces: you go to the Gold Coast and announce you are going to build a football stadium! This is the sort of priority that these people have. They all go for the glitzy projects and they shy away from the delivery of basic services. But the people of Queensland are waking up to them. The people of Queensland are waiting for this weekend.

Senator Wortley, you are right: there is an election this week. But, Senator Wortley, the swing is on and there is a sense of change. Why? Because they are frustrated, having had two decades—with the exception of a couple of years with Borbidge and Joan Sheldon—of Labor incompetence. They are sick to death of excuses. They are sick to death of this: ‘If you re-elect us it will somehow miraculously get better next time.’ No, it will not get better. In fact, it is getting worse. Every day we used to be in a centre of opulence, with royalties flowing into the treasury, but then it was the Labor Party in government in Queensland that had in excess of $60 billion in debt. Of course, as they have squandered the money they have lost the capacity to deliver basic outcomes in health. So it is about health. And if it is not about health, it is about education. And if it is not about education, it is about transport. On the basic delivery of these items they are completely and utterly incompetent. The Liberal and National parties will bring back hospital boards, to try to bring back a sense of community ownership. We in the Liberal and National parties believe there is a capacity for a person at the local level to know more about their area than some bureaucrat in George Street who has been feathering his own nest for the past two decades. The conservative side of politics has to be handed back the reins to deliver outcomes.