Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I am very keen to talk on the preventive health care document and I reflect on what a great job Lawrence Springborg is doing in Queensland with preventive health, but he is doing it in very difficult circumstances. The previous Labor government ran Queensland into debt of some $95 billion. It is almost up to the extent that the former Labor government ran up the Australian economy. For Senator McLucas to then blame significant Far North Queenslander Mr Bob Norman for the ills of the Labor Party and their complete mismanagement of Queensland Health is just beyond the pale. There have been, of necessity, job cuts right throughout Queensland in health and in other areas. Why? Because the Queensland government simply cannot afford to pay them. No longer can they afford to borrow money as the federal Labor Party government does—they just keep borrowing. Someday there will have to be a reckoning.

In the instance of Cairns, most of the jobs that went were, in fact, not frontline jobs. A lot of them were clerical, administrative and advertising jobs that Senator McLucas and her left-wing cohorts in Far North Queensland had been building up for years. I am pleased to say that Mr Norman and the Queensland state government are focusing health in Tropical North Queensland on the issues that really count. I look forward to a continuation of good administration of the Cairns regional hospital, and they will certainly get that with a distinguished Tropical North Queenslander, Mr Bob Norman, administering the health system. (Time expired)