Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When there is crisis and disaster it is a time for action and energy not necessarily for scepticism and scrutiny. So I do not criticise authorities unless lives are at risk and services can actually make a difference. Right now there is a variety of information coming out of Queensland about the performance of departments, particularly QRAA and the special flood assistance scheme, which was denying assistance to business owners for no other reason than more than half of their income might have been derived from other employment—although that is because their businesses are on the rocks. Owners are holding those businesses together. They are on the breadline. Sometimes they are employing seven people—in cases such as Elaine Wilkie, in my electorate—who would have had to walk away were it not for this scheme. I am glad that the minister and his advisor, Brian Timms, have been very positive in this regard and have encouraged all inundated businesses to formally apply for that money.

Queensland Health, on the other hand, is not so promising. It has a culture of secrecy, paranoia and, dare I say it, bureaucratic arse-covering that runs all the way up to that minister. This health department should have been in place earlier. They should have deployed the vital surgery packs and tetanus shots that were needed. But they did not. The communications channels were not in place. The special advisory warnings were not made on a regular basis. They were frozen in time on that website in many cases—in one case, for as long as 12 days. What we need is information that is sequenced for the phase of the disaster and tailored to local areas. We should not see the airbrushing out of warnings on the run, which we have seen so much of from Queensland Health. I urge a better performance from that department and its minister (Time expired)