Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy President. Hopefully, Senator Polley will take note of the things that I have to say.

It is just like the case was with South Australia: 16 long years of Labor, where services have been cut and people on the ground are noticing how they're waiting longer to get into hospitals and how school standards are slipping, just like they were in Tasmania up to the year 2014. In Tasmania since 2014—in the last four years—we have restored the number of nurses.

Bec White, the opposition leader in Tasmania, says she wants to restore funding: $500 million. I don't know where it's coming from; she hasn't told Tasmanians where that money's coming from but it's what she cut. Her government, a government that she was part of, sat around the cabinet table between the years 2010 to 2014 and presided over a decision to cut health funding in Tasmania by $500 million. They cut over 250 nurses. Those numbers have been restored in Tasmania. We have an extra 120 hospital beds on offer in Tasmania. We have an extra 350 hospital staff on offer in Tasmania. We are seeing a massive increase in the number of elective surgeries, up from 15,000 per annum to 19,000 per annum. This is proof that we are addressing the things that Senator Polley, and Senator Wong, in her contribution, highlighted—that these things translate into frontline services.

But one point that Senator Cormann touched on in his answers is the salient point about unanimous consent by all the states, territories and the Commonwealth with regard to any of the changes that are being talked about around here in this scare campaign that's being run by Labor senators back in Tasmania, and, I gather, also in South Australia. There is this inconvenient fact that everyone has to agree to whatever happens down the track. I suspect that there are some concerns on the part of Labor in South Australia that Mr Weatherill will agree to something that's bad for South Australia. Hence, all the concern on the part of federal representatives from that state.

But it's clear: Senator Polley said in her question that we need to have people in the states standing up to Canberra. Well, as I said before, Ms White has proven that she can't stand up for our state. She presided over these massive cuts to frontline services. She's responsible for the suffering of many people, because she sat around that cabinet table in Tasmania and she agreed to these cuts, to the hundreds and hundreds of frontline service jobs that went and that have been restored under the Liberal government. This is the same individual in Tasmania who couldn't conduct a simple interview with radio show host Brian Carlton in Launceston without text messages from her staff. As a result, that radio show host has banned telephones from the studio. How can Tasmanians trust an individual like that, who can't run an interview, who presided over these massive cuts and who definitely won't be standing up for the best interests of the state that I represent proudly? The choice is clear: Will Hodgman has it; Bec White doesn't.