Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present a statement relating to e-health reform by the Minister for Health and Ageing.

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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I wish to correct and make some observations in relation to Minister Roxon’s statement on e-health which was tabled in the House of Representatives yesterday. I would like to start by correcting some of the comments made by the minister, starting with the fact that she has asserted that for more than three months the government has wanted the Senate to consider the Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010. I remind the minister—and suggest that she obviously does not take very much notice of what happens here in the Senate—that in relation to the health identifiers bill, if the government cannot get its program right and cannot get this bill up to be debated before this house, it is not the fault of the opposition. I say to Minister Roxon that this case is another hissy fit that ‘Nurse Roxon’ is having. She is getting stroppy with people just because they do not do what she says.

On that note, I refer to some comments that were made in the House yesterday by the member for Dickson, the shadow minister for health in response to this statement—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re not quoting your own shadow minister!

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

I am making some comments, Senator Conroy.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You said you were going to refer to them!

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to 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.