Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Scullion. I will take that interjection. Absolutely—they are both bad. What is quite extraordinary is the hypocrisy of some of our state and federal Labor politicians. One example of such a federal Labor politician is Justine Elliot, the current member for Richmond. Looking at the rail line that Labor closed five years ago even though it is so desperately needed up there in the north, I was flabbergasted to come across a letter from Mrs Elliot in a previous campaign. In this letter to the residents she spoke about how she had got a commitment for some funding. She said: ‘This is a great victory for our community, which has run a tireless campaign to save the train. Thank you.’ This is about providing transport for seniors, and where is Justine Elliot, the local member, now? It is such hypocrisy when on the one hand you say you are going to look after seniors but on the other hand you do exactly the opposite.

Seniors should realise that this government is doing nothing for them. But not only is it doing nothing; it is ripping away the things they need the most. I recently attended a rally in Murwillumbah about the closure of this railway line. It was attended by a number of seniors who said to me, ‘We absolutely need this railway line for a whole range of reasons.’ They want to be able to see their children and grandchildren and to attend their schools at Casino down at the other end of the railway line. They talked about what it could do to open up the whole area for them.

Yet what have we seen from the Labor government? Absolutely nothing. In spite of a promise from the local member years and years ago that they would find the money, now there is absolutely nothing. I was very proud to stand up there with those seniors and my Nationals colleagues Geoff Provest and Jenny Gardiner to say that we will do what we can, everything we can, to try and help, because there was no sign of either Justine Elliott or Janelle Saffin at that rally. What the government is putting forward today is about taking away those concession cards from some of those seniors on the North Coast. They need those concession cards to be able to use public transport to get from A to B. I get sick and tired of our seniors being the last cab off the rank, being the ones who are least thought about and least considered when we are formulating what should be good policy for the future of those people. It is, simply, wrong.

It is also interesting to note what is going to be taken away from health—the prescribed pharmaceuticals and the PBS safety net. These are things that our seniors really rely on, and I can only think that this is indicative of Labor’s approach to health in general. If they think that taking those things away is an appropriate measure, they are just wrong. The attitude to health from this government is, quite frankly, appalling—even more so when we look at the comments the Prime Minister made during the election campaign. He said, ‘Kevin Rudd will fix our hospitals.’ He said, ‘The buck stops with me.’ And what have we seen? Absolutely nothing from this government—and this was from a Prime Minister who said he would honour all his election commitments.

He made an election commitment to fix our hospitals, and he has not done it—and there is no sign that it is going to be done in the future. It is an election commitment on which nothing is being done from the other side. It is particularly notable on the North Coast. We are seeing our hospitals up there in crisis. We are seeing maternity units being shut down—and everybody knows how important it is that women in regional communities have access to a decent level of health care when they are having their children. Even more importantly, our seniors on the North Coast cannot access a decent level of health care. Many will say that it is a state issue, and in many respects it is, but this became a federal issue when the Prime Minister said that he would fix the hospitals and that the buck stops with him. That is when this absolutely became a federal issue. He took responsibility and he has delivered absolutely nothing.

It is very interesting to look at precisely that issue of the Prime Minister’s election commitments. I was listening to him this morning on the radio when he was talking about the mandate that he had from the last election and the fact that he would honour his election commitments. I just wonder whether those election commitments and that mandate apply only to IR, because they certainly do not seem to apply to seniors. We are seeing that through the measures that the government is trying to introduce today. The Prime Minister said that he would make ends meet, that he was going to offer increased financial support and ease the burden for our seniors. Those were his election commitments; they were absolute commitments from the Prime Minister. But apparently they do not matter. The mandate and the election commitments apparently only matter if they relate to IR, because he made the same types of commitments during the election about seniors and he is not honouring them. That is absolutely clear through this bill today, and seniors should be very, very concerned about what the Labor government have in mind for the future of our senior Australians.