Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join my colleague here in expressing his frustration, and not only his frustration but that of so many other Australians, with the whole administration of this portfolio—with the expectations that were given in the 2007 election and the non-delivery and broken promises afterwards. During this session of the parliament over the last month we have rightly been focusing in this chamber on the government’s waste, bias and incompetence with regard to the stimulus package—and rightly so. We have pointed out ministers who have mismanaged or have been just straight-out incompetent. Of course Mr Peter Garrett fits into that category very well, as does the Deputy Prime Minister with regard to the expenditure on the so-called ‘education revolution’.

This portfolio flies under the radar and has previously flown under the radar . The minister in the other House, Ms Nicola Roxon, would have to be one—and I can see that you are about to jump on me, Madam Acting Deputy President for using the wrong terminology—who comes into that category of portfolio mismanagement and incompetence. I venture to say that this minister has been put into this portfolio—because she is certainly not up to the job—as a puppet to run Labor’s ideology, to take the brunt of the broken promises, and the previous speaker spoke of those broken promises very well. I say that with the full understanding that this is a difficult portfolio, whoever takes it up and whatever side of the House takes it up. It happens to be one of the busiest. It is probably the busiest portfolio outside the Prime Minister’s office. It gets as much mail as the Prime Minister’s office, I am told.

But with all that, Minister Roxon has handled this portfolio like the lightweight she is. Just look at all the broken promises. Just look at the failed programs. Just look at the mismanagement of the whole portfolio and you will agree with me. I am certainly sure that those on this side of the chamber will agree with me that we have a very lightweight minister running a very heavyweight portfolio. This is a government—and she takes the responsibility, I suppose—where the Prime Minister promised coming into government that they were going to fix the hospital system in the states. They were going to stop the blame game within 20 months. Their first act was to set up an inquiry. That inquiry found after 20 months that nothing had improved. The primary yardstick, if you like, the length of surgery queues, had increased. So what do they do? They set up another inquiry to inquire into the inquiry. What inaction!

This was also a minister that promised with great expectation that they were going to increase the nursing numbers. I believe that they dedicated some $39 million over five years to a target figure of 7,750. To date, two years on, nearly halfway through the program, they have 541. They are not going to meet that target. What a disappointment—another failure. This is where their priorities lie. In the first budget they cut—and I could be corrected by the shadow minister—$100 million from the chemotherapy budget.