Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We thank the nurses and doctors, the ambos and orderlies, in fact all of the workers on the front line of our healthcare crisis. Today is another record day, with 1,290 cases in New South Wales alone. There are alarming reports of nurses in understaffed hospitals having to sedate patients on ventilators to manage workloads. This is not okay. The New South Wales Premier, who describes the Prime Minister as 'an evil bully', says things are only going to get worse. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are campaigning against premiers and public safety at the very time that our ICUs are in danger of being swamped.

This is not a battle between freedom and tyranny. We all want freedom. This is a battle between the Prime Minister's incompetence and the nurses and doctors who have to clean up after him; and the small businesses who struggle to stay afloat and the big businesses competing against them getting $13 billion in JobKeeper subsidies that they didn't need.

The Prime Minister says we have to make a choice—a choice between hope for the future and holding him to account. Australians aren't mugs. We hope for a better future, and we'll work to keep him to account for his catastrophic failures.