Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Cormann says, it is a review into the review. They have gone to consultation. Little wonder that yesterday in question time government senators appeared to look so dispirited, worn and tired, because I understand that the consultation strategy proceeded yesterday with the Prime Minister in the Labor Party caucus giving a PowerPoint presentation on the consultation strategy. People like to talk of death by PowerPoint. I can only imagine what a PowerPoint presentation by the Prime Minister would be like. I understand he inflicts these presentations on the Labor Party caucus on quite a regular basis, which must be a most painful activity for all and sundry who have to go through it. I can only imagine that in this instance the Prime Minister would have stood there and there would have been a picture of the Prime Minister and Minister Roxon with some nurses and then another picture of the Prime Minister and Minister Roxon, perhaps in surgical gowns—some nice photos that could, perhaps, go in their electorate publications as long as the Department of Finance and Deregulation approved the content as not being electioneering. I can see slide after slide of the Prime Minister’s holiday tour around the nation’s hospitals as part of his review into the review and his consultation strategy.

It is a strategy that is so light on action and detail. All he is doing is talking and running around the country. What he is not doing is fixing the hospitals, hospitals that state Labor administrations have neglected and worn down for so many, many years. He is now failing to show the courage to stand up to those state Labor administrations and actually ensure there is some action in this area rather than an awful lot of photo opportunities.

In my home state of South Australia recently one of these consultations took place. The Prime Minister went to Murray Bridge. He wanted to talk about regional health, apparently, and visit a regional hospital so he very carefully chose Murray Bridge. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Health and Ageing know all too well that just there in Adelaide’s north lies the Gawler hospital. Hidden away in the budget details this year was a rezoning, a reclassification, of the Gawler hospital away from being treated as a regional hospital to being treated as a metropolitan hospital. The Prime Minister could have chosen to go to that semiregional, outer metropolitan area and talk to people there, but of course, no, he would not go there. He has not gone anywhere near the Gawler hospital in these consultations, because he knows the community there are very angry that the sneaky budget decision of this government last year is going to cost that community their health services and make it a whole lot harder to attract doctors to that area of Adelaide’s north.

This is the type of decision that the government are making. We have seen it on cataracts, as we have discussed at length today. There are sneaky decisions in the health budget that take away services and benefits from communities, whilst the government conduct roadshows and PowerPoint presentations talking about what they might be able to do and trying to once again convince the Australian people, as they did before the last election, that they stand for something, even though there is no action behind all of those words.

That was the review into the public health system, which has gone off to its consultations and review. Then we had the Preventative Health Taskforce review. I think 134-plus recommendations came from the Preventative Health Taskforce review. There were a stream of recommendations there, and what has the government decided to do? What is its action out of this? Its action is contained in this legislation. That action is the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. I am sure we all look forward to having yet another agency in Canberra, yet another bureaucracy established, yet more public servants being paid.