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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the Opposition will, of course, need to think about these issues. We are proud of the program that we have got on with. We are proud that, when you look at the great challenges facing the nation, we are moving on climate change. We are proud that we are moving on the education revolution. We are proud that we are getting computers into our schools. Your current deputy says that she has never seen a school that does not have computers, and does not think that there is any need for us to implement this program.

As the new Leader of the Opposition, he has the opportunity to reshape the opposition into a constructive opposition. I am sure that there will be things that we will fight on, but there should be many that we will actually agree on. The reason that I raised the issue of the republic is that it seems that, even with things that the Leader of the Opposition has had a longstanding commitment to—more than decades long—he is now not so sure that he believes in them. This is someone who wanted to be in the Labor Party and ended up in the Liberal Party; he was a republican and he is now not sure if he is a republican. We do not know where the Leader of the Opposition stands on any of these sorts of issues. Until he starts addressing them—until some of these interviews are about more than the Leader of the Opposition himself—then we do not know where he is going to stand.

He did not do anything on the first day of his leadership. I do not require this on the first day of assuming the leadership, but he did not direct his senators to support a dental care measure which would have supported hundreds of thousands of pensioners across the country—and he had the opportunity to do that. He did not revisit the completely ridiculous decision of the opposition to oppose our excise on alcopops. This is the measure that the previous Leader of the Opposition agreed with, then disagreed with and then thought he might agree with.

They have had so many different positions, it would not be an embarrassment in this instance for the Leader of the Opposition to change the position. They have had so many that it would not be a surprise, but it would actually mean that they were taking the matter of passing the budget seriously and making sure we have finances to invest in preventive health care and other important measures. It would mean that we had some money to properly establish the $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund, which the Liberal Party are putting at risk by refusing to pass billions of dollars worth of measures in the Senate.

We have heard nothing from the member opposite about whether he supports us putting a billion dollars back into our public hospitals—after he was a member of the cabinet and sat around that cabinet table and let them pull a billion dollars out. We have to, step by step, rebuild these things. But if we are going to meet opposition every step along the way—even for important measures that will protect young people from binge drinking and give us finances to invest further in significant preventive healthcare measures—then we have just changed leaders but we have not got any new impact. Today’s presentation to the public—I was almost going to say ‘summing up to the judge’ because that is what the first bit of it sounded like—still gave us no information about what the Leader of the Opposition is going to pursue in these many other areas of great national challenge. We have to invite him to join us in seriously tackling some of these challenges.

Health is my portfolio area, the one I am most focused on, where significant changes are needed to the way the states and the Commonwealth operate together, where new investments are needed, and where we have to look at Medicare differently. We want him to be able to engage in the education debate. There is an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to say that he is prepared to leave behind the Howard legacy. The previous Leader of the Opposition was not prepared to do that. Any time there was anything that challenged the last 11 years of history—mistakes from the Howard government, things that they did not do, opportunities that were missed, lack of investment—we had Dr Nelson, the member for Bradfield, when he was at the front table as the Leader of the Opposition, defending to the death every single decision that the Howard government made. The new Leader of the Opposition has a choice. Is he going to be just another defender of the Howard legacy, or is he going to be prepared to chart a new course? I thought we might see some of that today. I have a bit of time for the Leader of the Opposition. I thought that, if he was going to talk about great challenges facing our nation, we might have got a little bit of personal insight into what motivated him and why he wanted this job.

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