Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to be here to be debating the challenges that we face in the health system. It seems to me that, for the Minister for Health and Ageing, it is pretty difficult to tackle the nation’s health problems if you are too busy tackling your colleagues on your internal problems. The states, stakeholders and health professionals have been asking the health minister for months to deal with the issues, the crises, the major problems and long-term decisions that need to be made in our health system—they have been pleading with him to take some action. His answer to them has been: ‘I can’t do any of that now, because there is an election in the offing. I’m going to concentrate on the things that need to be done now.’ In fact he even publicly said, when the states asked if they could now recommence negotiations with him for the healthcare agreement: ‘No, I’m not going to do it now. It doesn’t have to be done now so I’m not going to do it now.’ He was as blatant as that.

Then I was surprised to read in the paper in the last couple of days that the very same minister has been giving all of his colleagues, who were obviously dealing with other internal matters, a lecture saying:

… as far as I am concerned we should be focused on being a good government now, and a better government in the future.

That was even after he has been spending months and months saying all he was going to do was clock off on some sort of extended smoko because an election was in the offing—he had no more duties as the health minister; he was not going to talk to the states; he was not going to try and solve any health problems; he was not going to deal with chronic disease; and he was not even able to make up his mind what his health policy was.

The most entertaining thing this week happened in question time today, when the minister was determined to try to make a mockery of our $2 billion health and hospital reform plan. He had the nerve to ask what the criteria would be for taking over a hospital. Maybe I could ask the minister what the criteria are for taking over the Mersey. I might suggest that the only criterion the minister is going to use is the electoral pendulum: ‘Where do you all come on the pendulum?’ Whether a hospital is going to be taken over by this minister depends on the government’s electoral prospects. Those are the full criteria that he uses. To stand up and say to us, when we have released a comprehensive plan with clear targets, benchmarks that are going to be signed off on and a whole range of opportunities—much more detail than your electoral pendulum—

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