Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. I'm asking the minister to outline to the House why an affordable and reliable energy supply is important for health services in Queensland, including both Mater and Redland hospitals in my electorate of Bowman. Is the minister aware of any threats that may jeopardise the delivery of services for my patients?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Bowman. He's not just a great local advocate for hospitals such as Mater and Redland but also a lifelong medical professional. He is, in fact, an eye surgeon, and to this day he continues to hold pro bono clinics in eye health care—really something extraordinary.

One of the things he knows is that Labor loves higher electricity prices, and those higher electricity prices are a threat to patients. They're a threat to hospitals such as Mater and Redlands and they're a threat to every hospital in Queensland. That's why we're introducing a National Energy Guarantee. That is why only today you're seeing the benefits of the work of the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment and Energy in pushing the gas companies to make more gas available, which will bring down the price of gas in this country, and in fact he's already so doing. We're also seeing the benefits of the abolition of limited merits review, another government initiative.

These are things that are aimed fairly and squarely at bringing down the cost of electricity and energy and bringing down the impact of that on hospitals—not just in the electorate of Bowman and not just in Queensland but right around Australia. And the member has also done something that not one person on the Labor side has done: he voted against a carbon tax. Labor introduced a carbon tax that had a $2,425 impact per annum on each hospital bed in Queensland. That was the impact of the carbon tax, on the Queensland Treasury's own modelling. And right now he is fighting against the Queensland government's impact—gouging, with regard to their own state-owned enterprises in electricity, and the 50 per cent RET in Queensland—which we have seen is posing blackout threats this summer.

The member's next task, which he's committed to, is to join all of us in fighting against Labor's attack on hospitals around Australia. Their 50 per cent renewable energy target national pledge is going to have an impact of $300 per year compared with our approach. That's $300 per family per year, and that is going to hurt each and every hospital. So, the member for Bowman isn't just an advocate for better health care and isn't just a practitioner of better health care; he's an advocate for hospitals that don't face the impact of Labor's assault on their electricity prices. He's going to continue to fight against Labor's bad practices, and so will we.