Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy President. I do not think that people between Gladstone and Brisbane, who have one of the lowest ratios of medicos to patients in the country, would be particularly interested in the story of Perth. It would be good, I am sure, if there were one success story out of these superclinics, but I doubt it.

We get to the bottom of the real ideology behind this when we find out that, whilst the department of health is intending to evaluate the superclinics, they are not going to evaluate the effect of superclinics on local private practices. Quite frankly, this government does not want to know. This is part of trying to socialise medicine and to do so in areas where they think they will get their biggest vote for their buck—with nothing whatsoever to do with success.

I am appalled that the minister is holding up the answers to these questions in the way that she is. I can understand that she feels the need to, but her slipping and sliding and spinning and hiding caused this problem in the first place. If she came out and honestly told us what the issues were and what, if anything, she was going to do to fix them, we would not be in the situation that we are currently in. I would like to ask the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Ageing to do his very best to ensure that we get prompt answers to those questions so that the matters can be pursued and so that taxpayers' money can be accounted for properly.