Wednesday, 7 February 2024

Health system

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (16:46): I rise to speak on the grievance motion and grieve for Victorians if Victorian Liberals and Nationals were ever let loose again on health and mental health services in Victoria. But to follow the member for Gippsland South, he says a lot – he had a fair crack; he had a better turnout than the member for Caulfield – but it just was not the spirited participation he was looking for. All the Nationals sort of came in, but maybe it is a bit late in the afternoon. He was looking around. He was looking for a bit of crowd participation, a bit of a rev up. It just was not quite there, and maybe it is because they have seen Nemesis; they have seen what has happened.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: If the member for Gippsland South was listening – it is only a minute in and he has already gone off the trails, a bit like Barnaby Joyce last night. That was well and truly off the trails – one of your former, I think, employers back in the day. We look at just the chaos and disarray of the Liberal–Nationals.

Now, I wanted to categorise this in a few formats, but this is a time where the Victorian Liberals and Nationals have the gall to stand up and try to say that they are on the side of our healthcare system and our mental health system. This is a mob, as we saw just last night, who tore the heart out of health federally. They say in finance terms that past performance is not an indicator of future behaviour, but in the political scene your past performance is your values. It is everything in your DNA, and what is the first thing that Liberals and Nationals go after when they are looking for budget savings and measures? They go after health care. They go after the people that support Victorians and indeed Australians in their time of need.

Victorians do not forget what happened during the pandemic – the undermining of health advice, the undermining of our health workforce. While the member for Hawthorn was doing fireside chats with Virginia Trioli at the ABC –

Sam Groth interjected.

The SPEAKER: Member for Nepean!

Tim RICHARDSON: trying to indicate that he was a moderate Liberal – if anything he is a fake moderate Liberal, and I will come to that and what we saw last night in Nemesis. But when he was doing that, we had the member for Bulleen and the former member for Kew attacking the health services and undermining health advice, and the very people that each and every day covered themselves in PPE to front up and save and protect their fellow Victorians were having to fight a narrative that was stoked by conservatives in this state. So while moderate voices stood by and let, time and time again, our health services, our nurses, our paramedics and our doctors front up to a more difficult circumstance, we sat by and saw how devastating that was.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: The member for Gippsland South was in some of those COVID hearings and was sitting around at those times and witnessing exactly what his colleagues were doing. How many times did he speak up on it? Never.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

The SPEAKER: Member for Gippsland South, you had your turn.

Tim RICHARDSON: He never put a voice forward. So we go back to then – those 2013, 2014 days, where there was a tax on our nurses, where I remember Marshall Baillieu literally giving the middle finger to our nurses as they campaigned for better wages and conditions and when they campaigned for nurse-to-patient ratio, which was enshrined into legislation in our constitution in 2015. When paramedics were in hallways, struggling to make ends meet and pleading with the government to listen to them, the then health minister David Davis called them liars and said that they were faking those circumstances.

When you have that track record – when Prime Minister Abbott was gutting health services and health outcomes across our nation, where were the Victorian Liberals? Premier Napthine did not say a thing. He was challenged, asked and pleaded with for bipartisan support, to put forward that support and protection of Victoria. They did not say a thing, and they were dealt with at the ballot box.

We have come forward to a circumstance where the Andrews, now Allan, Labor government have made record investments in health. We see a hospital building fund that is substantial, we see 36 per cent more nurses and midwives, we see 66 per cent more doctors and we see 10,000 students given the opportunity to study nursing and midwifery. That is on a past performance record of protecting and supporting our health services. And then you have those opposite. When you cannot find a paramedic or an ambulance, what do you do? You go to the scrap yard and you say, ‘Can we grab one of those old-school 1960s or 1970s ambulances? I only need it for an hour press conference.’ Then you go to the steps of Parliament and you grab the fake ambulance and you stand in front of it. That was the member for Caulfield. Such was the level of desperation and the lack of ability to connect with our health services, because they saw them coming a long way off.

What about when we literally bought private hospitals on behalf of Victorians – Bellbird, and Frankston down my neck of the woods – to catch up on the impacts of the pandemic on surgery waiting times. We had significant challenges to get those people through. What did the shadow minister say?

Members interjecting.

Tim RICHARDSON: We are on the hook here. Here we go. We are getting a bit of crowd participation here. Do not worry; we will come to all of you soon. There is plenty of time. $1.5 billion COVID catch-up payments and the buying of private hospitals that lowered the patient waiting list by 50,000 in that quarter – now, what did the Shadow Minister for Health say? This was ‘socialist manoeuvring’ – which then a few days later they supported, knowing how significant it would be and knowing how absurd their position was to oppose it.

You see, when you stand for nothing, you get found out by Victorians. That is what has happened time and time again. We saw it last night on Nemesis. Goodness me, wasn’t that compelling viewing. I got home a bit late last night. I got back to Mordy and thought I should probably have a sleep, but I am going to watch it. You saw Turnbull there and you thought ‘There’s the fake moderate of the Liberals.’ The fake moderate who got captured by the Nationals and who got led around for two years of his prime ministership. And we see a similar context happening here. We see it in the opposing of the treaty that was put forward in October in the joint coalition party room, and we see the fake moderate ‍– the Aldi low-priced version of a moderate – John Pesutto, the member for Hawthorn, the Leader of the Opposition. That is the fake moderate right here –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Gippsland South, I know what your point of order is. I do ask members to call other members by their correct titles.

Tim RICHARDSON: You are all doing the numbers, we know. It is okay. We know there is a lot of tension over there. We know –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Mordialloc, through the Chair. Member for Nepean, I ask you to cease interjecting.

Tim RICHARDSON: We know there is a bit of counting going on. We know there is a bit of sensitivity. There is just a bit of a harsher lull at the moment. But luckily, unlike on Nemesis, where there were contenders left, right and centre, there is not a logical contender to the member for Hawthorn. When the answer is the member for Bulleen, you have got to wonder what the question is. There is a substantial lack of talent and depth on that side because, guess what, when you stand for nothing, you get found out. We saw during that program the ventilations by the Prime Minister of how they were captured by the far right and how the Queensland Liberal–Nationals led them around, and we see some really significant similarities in Victoria. We see an opposition leader who fronted up to First Nations people talking about health and mental health policy and health outcomes for First Nations people and did not have the guts to tell them that he had backed down on treaty. He had backed down on that policy which had been bipartisan. Members of Parliament came into this place and witnessed one of the most significant moments in this Parliament’s history, and then he had the gutlessness to walk away and not tell anyone until a few people backgrounded it to media and they were exposed. That is the level of decency that the Leader of the Opposition is bringing forward.

So when you have that kind of behaviour and that kind of conduct, you know that Victorians cannot trust you. When you know that Victorians and health workers have shown that they do not want to stand with you – they did not want to stand with the member for Bulleen during the campaign. Remember when they were standing out in paddocks and in front of hospitals having weird doorstops and there was no third-party endorsement of any policy proposal they put forward, like when they opposed the Suburban Rail Loop and went down that cul-de-sac, which they are completing for the third time.

Remember when the then Leader of the Opposition, the now member for Bulleen, said ‘Oh, well, we’re gonna scrap that project, shelve it, still do it, shelve it,’ but there was not anything significant on the budget papers at that time – and they were going to go on this funding spree of health outcomes that no-one believed. It was as crazy as the then Leader of the Opposition’s proposal in 2018, remember the intersection removal policy where they had almost futuristic roads hovering over each other? I remember Balcombe Road in Mentone. Like, where on earth did the road go? Maybe it was out in the bay. We still do not know. They do not talk about that policy, those random freeway level crossing removals. Even though the member for Gippsland South is in the road space now, he will never ever talk about that crazy policy. They announced it one day and never campaigned on it again. It was twice as expensive as the level crossing removal policy, and they have never talked about it again – that ‘freeway of awesomeness’ policy or whatever it was.

That is the level of policy now. We see reasoned amendment after reasoned amendment, pushing off bills. That is an example of not fronting up to do your homework. It is an example of, ‘Oh well, we don’t consult, we don’t do any work in shadows.’ You see their low speak rate in here, and what you see is that the Greens are becoming the true opposition, which is a terrifying prospect. The primary diminishment of the coalition, but particularly the Liberals, undermines the two-party system not only in our nation but in our state, and that has serious ramifications. We see that across Europe and we see that across the United Kingdom and what that means for stability in democratic systems. It is not just us looking on and saying, ‘Okay, well, there are 56 seats now and where does this go.’ We saw the stunts today from the Greens political party and where you take the low road on particular issues and we see that only the Nationals are really increasing their viability. We are seeing the Liberals being diminished.

That is what the state of play is. You see a system of governance here, and you see a shadow cabinet that for the last 438 days has not been known for anything. You see the murmurings, you see those looking across, you see during question time the eyes looking down. There is not a coherent opposition strategy, and the Leader of the Opposition and member for Hawthorn could not be described as a moderate if you tried. Luckily for him, there is not a successor. There is not a logical choice other than the member for Bulleen to come forward. So what we see now is a situation where –

Danny O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, the latest edition of Rulings from the Chair under the term ‘grievance debate’ is a ruling from Speaker Maddigan on Hansard page 880, 9 April 2003:

The grievance debate is not an occasion to personally attack members of the opposition.

That applies to the Leader of the Opposition as well.

The SPEAKER: It has been a very wideranging debate today in the grievance debate, member for Gippsland South. I do remind members that it is inappropriate to impugn other members; however, there have already been some attacks from both sides, so I will allow the member for Mordialloc to continue but to be mindful of those rulings from the chair and the standing orders.

Tim RICHARDSON: Thank you, Speaker. I had this whole section on trials and legal counsel, and I might just leave that for another time. I will let that one go – and diaries – but anyway we will let that go.

When you are distracted by what is happening in your own party room, when you are distracted by counting numbers rather than counting the policies for the people that you are meant to represent, when after 438 days of the 60th Parliament you are known for nothing other than fighting each other and going further to the right and when you claim in your fireside chats and your opinion pieces that you will be a better Liberal and a better outcome for Victorians and yet you walk away from some very important and progressive policies in our state –

Danny O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, I think the member referring to ‘you’ is disrespectful to the Chair and he should be brought back to addressing people correctly in this chamber.

The SPEAKER: Indeed, member for Gippsland South. Member for Mordialloc, I ask you to refrain from using the term ‘you’.

Tim RICHARDSON: At least he will get a good shout-out at shadow cabinet for the stirring contribution that he made in his references and the great, stern defence of the Leader of the Opposition. Well done, member for Gippsland South. You are not known for much. You have been parked on PAEC indefinitely, but at least you rolled the arm over on that defence of the Leader of the Opposition.

We all know that on this side we are supporting the health outcomes of Victorians, we are investing in education and we are delivering the transport outcomes that are needed for the future.

We have had the member for Kew and the member for Sandringham come in and criticise where the budget is up to, but they will not look back – and I note that the member for Kew was not here in the previous Parliament, but the member for Sandringham certainly was – and say what they would have done differently during the pandemic. You cannot get up on doorstops and whinge to the clouds but not say what you would have done differently or what you would do in the future. There is never an alternative put forward.

There was the stirring baritone of the member for Sandringham. He has done Toastmasters a bit, I think – looking through the cameras and looking around the place. He has got some leadership aspirations, we all know. Get the nice blue tie going. But when you dig down deeper into his 7-minute speech on the budget, you sort of wonder where he is going with it. What does he actually stand for? Where is the depth in that contribution? All there is is the interest amount – he does not talk about the undermining of our health system, does not talk about the opposition that they had to the $31 billion invested in business support and health outcomes during the pandemic. It is okay for them to take a few hits from the sidelines, but it takes a bit more to actually do the policy work and say what you would do differently. That is where Victorians have found this mob out. So my challenge to the Liberals – not so much the Nationals, because they did all right last election, as they like to remind everyone; they are carrying the team – is to front up and do some work. Front up and get on bills. Do some policy rather than punching on internally, rather than undermining each other – otherwise we look forward to the next ABC episode of Nemesis 2.0, on the Victorian Liberals.