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

I am finishing the quote. This comes directly from your speech to the General Practice Network.

we made mistakes in Indigenous health, in areas like workforce planning and in hospital management.

Again, the member for Dickson was out last week saying:

Patients as well would have seen a dysfunctional system over the last 10 years, particularly when you talk about public hospitals.

Paradoxically, after having been prepared to acknowledge these mistakes, the member for Dickson also said last week:

I thought the priority, if you are talking about the here and now of health priorities would be to fix our hospitals and to fix them quickly.

So, after 12 years of doing nothing but pulling money out of our public hospitals, he now wants everything fixed overnight. But here is the really puzzling thing about the debate from the other side of the House: we now have the member for Dickson urgently committed to investing in our hospitals. But unfortunately—and I admit that this is the first time that I have ever felt sorry for the member for Dickson—the member for Dickson now has to deal with a new shadow Treasurer who, unlike the Treasurer on this side of the House, does not believe in investing in hospitals. The Deputy Prime Minister has already referred to this quote from an interview with Lenore Taylor, where the shadow Treasurer is reported to have said that:

… all other things would not have been equal under a Coalition government. For example, it would not have made the generous $15.1 billion Council of Australian Governments deal with the states announced last December to deliver health, hospitals, education, housing and other services, although he won't say how much it would have spent.

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