Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mental health is an important area, and some of the issues that Senator McLucas has raised are things that I have been helping constituents with also, but I have not come into the chamber and made a political point about it in the hope that someone from the press gallery might be watching me. I have actually got onto the ministers and their officers and said: 'Look, these are problems. Can we do something about it?'

In a case that I am sure Senator McLucas knows about, because it is up in the area that she is supposed to be looking after, I have helped someone who was providing services in the mental health area with a contract termination and where it went from there. Just yesterday the friends of rural and regional health had a meeting here where the issue was raised of contracts for staff in rural and regional Australia terminating on 30 June, but them not knowing at this stage. As a result of that, immediately following the meeting, I took the people involved to one of the minister's advisers, who came around on the spur of the moment and spent some time with them. I could not stay, so I am not quite sure how it evolved. But I did get a message that the issue was being progressed and looked at. So you can do things without coming into the chamber and spending a lot of time hoping that you might get a bit of a news headline out of this sort of issue. That is an important issue, but Senator Nash and Ms Sussan Ley are two of the best health ministers that I have seen in my very long time in this parliament and they far outweigh and they far exceed the relevance, interest and action of the health ministers—I am not sure how many there were—under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments.

The motion we are talking to is take note of the minister's answers on why a question asked 35 days ago has not been answered. Under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government it was over four years that I had asked questions of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government and they still were not answered. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government went out of power before my questions asked in the early days in 2008 were even answered by ministers in the Labor government. So spare me the hypocrisy about questions not being answered. The Labor Party made an absolute art form of never answering questions in spite of us raising it time and time again.

There is also something else that I will raise. These are important debates, but the Senate has a process and from 3 pm to 3.30 pm there is take note of answers and senators adjust their time accordingly. In the time that I have been waiting to speak on take note of answers I have been and chaired a meeting of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. Senator Bilyk could not get there because she was waiting to speak here. Other colleagues have been to and from meetings. The minister was going to deliver perhaps the most important ministerial statement in years at 3.30 today, and we were all preparing ourselves for that and we all wanted to hear about that.