Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I hear an interjection from Senator Evans. I am sure that you would do a better job in this portfolio, Minister. As a good senator from Western Australia, I think that you should go to the Prime Minister and ask him for the health portfolio, Senator Evans, because in two years this Minister for Health and Ageing has not made one single tough decision. Maybe Senator Sterle would do a better job. I can see him putting his hand up. Senator Sterle would like to make a contribution in the health portfolio. I am sure that Senator Sterle would be able to make a few tough decisions because certainly Nicola Roxon is not able to make a tough decision. Nicola Roxon has been sitting on her hands for the last two years. She has been running review after review. We are now having this review into the review, with a propaganda exercise across Australia with the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health Ageing going for photo opportunity after photo opportunity at a hospital near you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am sure that Nicola Roxon and the Prime Minister will turn up for a photo opportunity at a hospital near you.

I am not sure how much that will achieve in terms of better health outcomes. In fact, I dare to say that it will not achieve any better health outcomes. If you look at all the data that has come out in recent times, the situation in our health system is worse today than it was when the Rudd Labor government was first elected to government. I will just recap. In health before the last election Australians were promised the world. They were promised that the Rudd Labor government had a plan to fix public hospitals, and if it would not achieve it by the middle of 2009 it would put a proposal to the Australian people for Canberra to take over the funding of public hospitals. No progress has been made at all. After the election, rather than implementation of a plan we had a 20-month review which is now being followed by a review into the review. We were promised that the government was supportive of and committed to retaining the existing private health rebates and the overall private health policy framework, only to find out after the election that the government had returned to its bad, old-fashioned, inglorious past of running a crusade against private health. We were told that health was going to be a high priority area, only to find out that in two successive budgets, while there was reckless spending everywhere else in every other portfolio of government, in the health portfolio there is ill-thought-out, short-sighted budget cut after budget cut.

We are supportive of preventive health. We are supportive of effective preventive health measures. We are not interested in delaying this bill, but if our second reading amendment, which I move now, is successful it is going to be up to the government how quickly we can deal with this.

At the end of the motion, add:

and further consideration of the bill be an order of the day for three sitting days after the government has tabled a response to all of the recommendations of the report of the National Preventative Health Taskforce.

We would be able to deal with this before the end of the year very easily. All the government has to do is give us a list: yes, we support this one; no, we do not support that one; we may support part of this one but not in its entirety. The Australian people deserve to know what direction this government is proposing to take on preventive health, as the Australian people deserve to know what the direction of the Rudd government is going to be for the remainder of its term in the health portfolio generally. For two years it has been ducking and weaving for cover and we have not seen any serious answers. (Time expired)