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

The member for Moncrieff is returning to form—he wants to talk about the problems. We know there are problems, but the previous government never wanted to fix them. They never wanted to improve the system and work to fix it. Here we are investing more money in the system and these guys opposite want to have it both ways. This is interesting because the shadow spokesperson for finance, the member for North Sydney, said during question time that it is not about money—that money does not matter. Believe me, in health it is not just about money, but money does matter. You have to use money to drive change. You have to use money to invest and deliver on reforms. That is exactly what we have been doing—it is what we have been doing in the first 12 months and it is what we intend to keep doing. I think it is extraordinary that we have a shadow minister for health who has not got anything better to say when we have been delivering so much.

Let us just go back over the last 12 months—tomorrow it will be 12 months since we were sworn in—and look at what has been delivered. Even leaving aside the massive COAG agreement on the weekend, we immediately put $1 billion into our public hospitals; and now we have $68.4 billion going in. We put in $600 million to slash elective surgery waiting lists, as I said. There have been 27,000 procedures already delivered—2,000 extra, three months ahead of schedule. There is the Teen Dental Plan, where we have thousands of teenagers across the country getting their preventative checks early and making sure they have good oral health. We have established the new health checks for kids—for four-year-olds before they start school. This has been very popular with parents. It is a very good idea to check that everything is in order so that when kids get to school they are ready to learn and they do not have problems with their sight, their hearing or other issues that have gone undetected.

There are more than 1,000 extra university places in nursing. The shadow minister does not think that extra nurses are important—obviously he does not understand that they are the backbone of the system. There are ultimately an extra 250 GP places ongoing from 2011—75 more next year, 100 the year after, and 250 a year from then on; some are going into Aboriginal medical services. We have seen our anti binge drinking strategy hit the airwaves. We have our local programs out, we have advertising and we are already seeing young people saying that these ads are shocking them into being more careful. These are the sorts of initiatives that we are proud we have delivered on. But the shadow minister stands up and says that we have done nothing, that they do not want money in the system and that they just want to attack the states. It is a case of the same old, same old. I keep waiting for more information. I keep waiting and waiting. I feel like I am ‘waiting for Dutto’, I tell you—just waiting for nothing. (Time expired)

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