Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say that New South Wales is not the only state where Labor governments run public dentistry badly. I regret to inform the House that in the mid-1990s, after the Leader of the Opposition thought he had been the real Premier of Queensland for about five years, public dental waiting lists in Queensland were more than three years, despite the Keating dental scheme. Queenslanders have 50 per cent worse dental decay than other Australians because when this bloke opposite reckoned he was the real Premier of Queensland he refused to fluoridate the water supplies of Queensland.

Mr Speaker, I ask you: is this miserable result due to the fact that he is not a socialist or is it due to the fact that he was a Christian socialist? I put this question, Mr Speaker, through you: if this bloke opposite is such a genius—if he is the genius he thinks he is—why couldn’t he run health services in Queensland? The real question for the people of Australia is: why would you trust Labor to run the country when you cannot trust them to run the states? People are concluding pretty fast that you will not trust this guy with Medicare. You will not let him do to Medicare what he did to the health services of Queensland.

See this speech in context