George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Thirty-one thousand people on the waiting list. This is an $8.9 billion health system servicing a population of 4.2 million people, and yet the waiting lists have blown out under the stewardship of the state Labor government. And the mindset of Labor in Queensland when it comes to health policy, just as in so many other areas of service delivery, is that their first and last priority is to look after the bureaucrats who run the system. Their very lowest priority is to look after the interests of the patients.

It is very like that episode many years ago of the famous television comedy show Yes, Minister. I am sure you will remember it, Mr Deputy President. The minister for health had discovered the perfect hospital in the system—no patients! There were plenty of bureaucrats, plenty of paramedics, a few doctors here and there, but no patients to trouble the bureaucrats. That is the Bligh vision: a system in which patients are so low a priority that they might as well not even be there. Everybody in Brisbane, in regional Queensland and throughout my state is perfectly well aware that the state hospital system is a shambles, that the standards of the state hospitals are appalling. Forty per cent of state hospitals have inadequate accreditation measures. This is the responsibility of the Australian Labor Party, the party that has been running the system for 11 long years. (Time expired)