Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to refer to them. Stop interrupting. I am going to refer to some comments that Mr Dutton made in response to Minister Roxon’s statement. I also put on the record that we do support and have supported e-health. E-health was an initiative of the Howard government, and we will be dealing with the health identifiers legislation, if not this evening then tomorrow, because it is down on the list.

Yesterday the Minister for Health and Ageing contacted the member for Dickson at about one o’clock to say that she was going to make a ministerial statement. A draft of that ministerial statement was provided. The statement that Minister Roxon ultimately read out in the House had had all the abusive language taken out. The draft statement contained a litany of personal abuse. Obviously somebody must have told her, ‘Minister, this is not appropriate to put in a ministerial statement,’ and it had to be taken out.

Yesterday, of all days to make a ministerial statement on something this Senate has been considering for months and on legislation that we have already said that we will support—and obviously the minister does not read press releases that we put out, because we informed her on 21 June that we would support this legislation; indeed, we made a whole series of suggested amendments, which the government has accepted and are now going to amend their own legislation to take into account—Minister Roxon got up and gave her ministerial statement.

It is funny—it was on the same day that Professor Mendoza had come down on the government like a ton of bricks because of their inaction on mental health and on the same day that Minister Tanner was alleged to have commented that there is no money left in the coffers for mental health and aged care! What a day to drop a distraction! And, of course, that is what yesterday’s ministerial statement was about. It was an attempt by the minister to distract and deflect attention from Professor Mendoza’s resignation. That is what the minister was doing.

After the minister dropped this tirade of abuse, after question time it took advisers from the shadow parliamentary secretary and the minister’s office 15 to 20 minutes of discussion to come to agreement on most of the amendments, so I say to the minister: if this is the way you do business—dropping vitriol like the sort of stuff you dropped yesterday—it says more about you and your inability to deal with the health portfolio and the mess that the health portfolio is in. In future the minister should think very carefully before she puts this sort of drivel on the record.

Question agreed to.