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

Peter, Peter, Peter! That was absolutely the most pathetic display. The shadow minister had 15 minutes to set out some plan, some vision, for the coalition; to argue on a substantive point about why $64.8 billion going into our health system is a bad idea; to stand up and say that he does not want the new doctors that we have promised who are going to be trained in his electorate; to stand up and say that he does not want the teenagers in his electorate to get their first preventative health check ever—paid for by the Commonwealth, $150 per teenager; or to stand up and say that increasing the numbers of new nurses being trained through our universities and going into our hospitals is something that, if only the coalition had been given more time, they would finally have gotten around to. This is the most pathetic excuse for a debate about public hospitals. Fresh from an agreement on Saturday through which we are investing billions and billions of dollars into our public hospitals, the shadow minister for health expects to be taken seriously when he stands up and says that in 12 months nothing has been done in health.

I seem to recall that, in addition to the list that I have already gone through, we did not hear anything from those opposite when we proposed to put $600 million into elective surgery. The shadow minister has not been brave enough to stand up and say that those 27,000 people who have had surgery done because of an extra investment made by the Commonwealth, complemented by state effort, is something that they do not support. They never put a single dollar into elective surgery but, somehow, what we have done in 12 months to help improve those waiting lists just does not count for anything.

This shadow minister is not going to be taken seriously if in a debate about the serious matter of investing in our public hospitals he cannot even speak for more than four minutes before he has to get off the topic of health. He spent most of the time on spin and talking about a whole range of other issues. I am surprised he did not put in a bit about economics because he is clearly trying to change jobs to get the deputy leader’s position; he would like to be the shadow Treasurer.

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