Dr WOOLDRIDGE (Minister for Health and Aged Care) (3:59 PM) —That is the conclusion of 15 months work from the opposition. I have to say that is the reason we are polling the best numbers in health that we have for 20 years over this side of the House. As long as the Labor Party wish to concentrate on personalities and on matters that are of no importance to the Australian public, you will continue to be the shadow minister who can take the credit for doing the worst, in political terms, that anyone on that side of the House has done for nearly twice the time I have been here.

There are such a large number of inaccuracies in the opposition's allegations, it is hard to know where to start. Let me take them one by one. The first is this continuing claim that I somehow falsely claimed that the Attorney-General cleared me. That is simply a misreading of what was said and it is one that does the Labor Party no credit at all.

Mr Lee —It was the Auditor-General, not the Attorney-General. You got that wrong too.

Dr WOOLDRIDGE —That's your most useful contribution to parliament in 18 months.

Mr Lee —You don't like corrections, do you!

Dr WOOLDRIDGE —In the transcript from the AM speech it says very clearly that I was asked:

I replied:

Saying one is in the clear is fundamentally different from saying that the Auditor-General cleared me. So for the Labor Party to then go on and attempt to misrepresent quotations to bolster their arguments shows how thin their arguments in fact are and shows that they have been able to come up with absolutely nothing new.

The second allegation is that I somehow told the people what was in the budget. I would suggest you read para 2.27 of the Auditor-General's report:

So, utterly, clearly and unequivocally the minister did not reveal what was in the budget to that meeting. You must remember that I was authorised by cabinet to undertake a negotiation with a professional group. It does cause me some distress to find that 204 members of that professional group are currently being considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and I hope it would cause some distress to that profession. I suppose I can be accused of being naïve; I can be accused of having dealt with the College of Pathologists previously and expecting that radiologists would observe the same high probity that the College of Pathologists have in their negotiations with government. But there is no evidence at all of a budget leak, In fact, I think the Auditor sums it up very well in para 2.32:

and these are meetings, one must recollect, that happened over several months—

To say that someone may have deduced or become aware that consideration was being given to a matter is vastly different from saying that someone told them what was going on—utterly different; you cannot correlate the two.

If you then go back to the sequence of events in the report, the Auditor lists the discussions that took place over the February-March-April period. The notion of supply side controls was discussed openly and on many occasions—and that was proper. It was part of a formal negotiation with a college, it was an area that was highly technical and complex, it was an area where we needed to get the professional input of this group in order to try to make something that was cutting-edge policy work. In one sense, that has worked, because we have instituted restrictions on MRI ordering, we have instituted clinical audits, we have instituted an evidence base to this new item number on the MBS that has never been done for any item number prior to Medicare. We could have done what the Labor Party did with the introduction of CT scanning. Had we done that, there would not be a problem today at all, We could have just said, `Let's put the new item on Medicare, let it rip and let the radiologists do what they want.' That is one of the reasons we have one of the highest numbers of CT scans per head of population of any country in the OECD. Had I not attempted to put any supply controls in place, I would not have had a problem because there would be nothing to be judged by. So the Labor Party standard is `Have no controls. Try and have no evidence base to what you are doing. Just let it rip and you don't have a problem.' The only trouble is that the taxpayer has a problem—you have to pay for it. So it was quite proper; it was sanctioned by cabinet to go through a formal process of negotiation about the introduction of MRI.

The different meetings that occurred are set out in the report. At 2.6, it states that in late March-early April 1998, controlling supply through a site freeze was discussed. Paragraph 2.7 states:

Paragraph 2.8 states:

what we actually ended up doing. Paragraph 2.10:

Para 2.11:

Para 2.12:

So there are specific references, other than this meeting of 6 May, to two conversations—neither of which I was involved in—involving machines on order and numerous conversations involving a site freeze. This speculation is not improper. This speculation was part of trying to bring in a measure with appropriate controls around it.

The 6 May meeting is one that, with hindsight, I perhaps would not have gone to. But, in the end, I thought it was proper to try to explain to the radiology profession why we were presenting certain items in the budget paper as we did. The opposition claims that I have somehow misrepresented what the Auditor said. Well, in essence I have tried very clearly to say that the Auditor found no impropriety, the Auditor found no wrong-doing, the Auditor could not find that a leak had actually occurred, and that is in spite of the very great powers he had, all of which were used under oath or affirmation over a period of many months.

The opposition makes much—and one newspaper in this country only attempts to do the same—of a senior departmental official's statutory declaration being wrong. This is the declaration of Ms Rogers, and it is over the putting of a Dr Brazier as attending the meeting rather than Les Apolony. Ms Rogers attended many meetings. Dr Brazier, in the note that was tabled yesterday, says he can understand why she made the error. When people go to many meetings, it is understandable that some things get confused. Incidentally, the reason I can remember what happened at the 6 May meeting was that it was the only meeting I attended. Other people were attending many meetings; I attended one. It is not surprising that someone would forget Les Apolony, as his job was to get the tea and coffee. Other than maliciously leaking information to newspapers, he has had no role in this matter at all.

The second thing that the opposition makes much of is the statutory declaration of Dr Rachel David. Well, her statutory declaration has not been corrected. It is completely accurate. She makes no pretence of having an exhaustive account of everyone who was at the meeting. Again, her comment to me was exactly the same: `Why should I remember the guy who got the tea and coffee?'

The opposition says my sole basis of defence is on the statutory declarations; but in fact it is not. There is something inherently inconsistent and illogical with that line. If you check Hansard, the member for Jagajaga also said that I told the radiologists and the radiologists passed it on. The opposition is saying that the radiologists' testimony is superior and to be believed. If you take that as accurate, you must believe all of their testimony. You must believe their testimony that occurs in paragraph 2.31 as well:

It is inconsistent to say that somehow this is the leak and they have passed it on and you believe their testimony but that you do not believe their other bit of testimony in 2.31. The fact is that my defence has never solely relied on this, because it was proper for me to have the discussions. It was authorised by cabinet, it was in the public interest and we were trying to do something that simply had not been done before. I was authorised, and it was proper, to hold the discussions that occurred. My misfortune was to happen to bump into the College of Radiologists.

The opposition further goes on that supply measures were claimed to have been discussed when I claimed they were not discussed. I have to recall the date off the top of my head, but I think this was first raised in parliament on 9 February last year. If you check Hansard then, I actually said at the time that things were discussed but they were discussed in general terms. Again, that was right: they were discussed in general terms. These issues were raised by the College of Radiologists. They were worried that we were not going to have open slather as they had come to expect from the Labor Party—as they had had with the introduction of MRI.

Finally, the member for Jagajaga makes much of me originally claiming that this was driven by professional rivalry. Unfortunately, professional rivalry is a big part of this. Some of the information that has been passed on has been because of people who missed out on machines. Unfortunately, some honest people have machines and are hurting very badly. Other people who we believe have acted improperly we have not been able to actually catch on the backdating of orders, because the HIC believes that one supply company at least changed its computer systems early on to make finding that backdating impossible. In fact, the head of the HIC believes that many more orders were backdated than they were actually able to prove, and that in large part explains the rush of orders.

The opposition bases much of its attack on me on the Prime Minister's code of conduct. I have the relevant sections here. The fact is that we did seek to correct any misconception, and the misconception, as I said, was trivial and is not nearly as great a misconception as the Labor Party trying to falsely read out quotes that did not exist and which I note they have not yet corrected. The other part of the ministerial code of conduct that is relevant is on page 13:

If you examine the course of record, the fact is that, had I left it to the department, this would have come out even more slowly. I sought to bring it to a conclusion by passing a regulation through the parliament that all machines had to have a close-off date. The instant I had the result of that, I in fact ordered an Auditor-General's inquiry. We froze all machines that had come into the country since February 1998, and the actions, once I found out, have been swift and comprehensive. As I said, the Director of Public Prosecutions is examining a very large number of cases—although, in the end, we would never expect to get anything like that number of prosecutions, because criminal proof is a much higher standard of proof; but I suspect that we will get quite a few civil prosecutions.

In the end, what the Labor Party cannot accept is that we have introduced something that is of immense benefit to the Australian public. The Labor Party cannot accept that the Auditor could not find that there was a single dollar that had been inappropriately spent. In fact, if you look at the Blandford review, the number of scans we are having at the moment is just about spot-on with what we would expect, from the latest data. The fact is that we now have 66 machines in Australia eligible for Medicare, rather than 18 when the member for Jagajaga was advising Brian Howe. We now have 17 machines in rural and regional areas, whereas we had none when the member for Jagajaga was advising Brian Howe. The average wait for a scan is now one week, compared to five months when the member for Jagajaga was advising Brian Howe. The average cost to the patient is around $50, compared to up to $800 when the member for Jagajaga was advising Brian Howe. The fact is that these scans are of enormous benefit to the Australian public. They are in place. They are making a difference to serious medical conditions, particularly diseases of the brain, spinal cord, and joints. We have a good future in this area. They will continue to be of great benefit to the Australian public.