Mr BAKER (2:37 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister confirm that the government is determined to ensure continued delivery of quality hospital services at the Mersey hospital in La Trobe, Tasmania? Is there now general acceptance of the need to preserve the range of services at the Mersey hospital? What alternative policies are there and what is the government’s response?

Mr ABBOTT (Minister for Health and Ageing) —I do thank the member for Braddon for his question. Again, I congratulate him on leading the fight to stop the state Labor government’s downgrading of the Mersey hospital in Tasmania. Let me say this: to the extent that the state Labor government’s health plan involves upgrading one community’s hospital by downgrading another community’s hospital, it is a bad plan and it should be blocked. Bad plans by the state governments should be resisted by good local members like the member for Braddon.

Let me say again that the people of Devonport, La Trobe, Kentish, Sheffield and Ulverstone deserve a hospital of their own. They should not be forced to go 60 kilometres up the road to gain access to acute hospital services. That is why the Howard government has put a plan in place to save the Mersey hospital. The Commonwealth will fund the hospital, the community will control the hospital and the hospital will deliver the same range of services that have been safely and effectively delivered at the hospital for many years. That is the Howard government’s plan. And when it was announced, didn’t all hell break loose! We had the Leader of the Opposition, no less, describing it as ‘an absolutely rotten way to conduct the business of a federation’. We now know that he thinks the right way to conduct the business of a federation is to engage in secret negotiations with the state government, with a state government imposed Friday deadline—just the sort of thing he used to do when he was the Dr Death of Queensland. And, just like the only real job he has ever had, yet again he is taking instructions from the state premiers.

The SPEAKER —Order! The minister will withdraw that statement.

Mr ABBOTT —What’s that, Mr Speaker?

The SPEAKER —The reference to the Leader of the Opposition—

Mr ABBOTT —As taking instructions from the state premiers?

The SPEAKER —No, the previous one.

Mr ABBOTT —Mr Speaker, it was a self-description, but in deference to you I withdraw it. As the Australian revealed today, the Leader of the Opposition now accepts that the state government’s plan was in fact a betrayal of the people of the Mersey region; and the federal government intervention that was a travesty last week, it seems, is a necessity this week. Once again, on a major policy issue, we see the Leader of the Opposition practising followership, not leadership. This Leader of the Opposition only knows what to do because he sees this Prime Minister doing it first. He follows the ACTU on industrial relations and he follows the Prime Minister on just about everything else. The people of Australia are entitled to ask this question: what would the Leader of the Opposition do if he did not have a great Prime Minister to follow and echo? I tell you what he would be. He would be a kind of Manchurian candidate for the ACTU. But what the people of Australia are coming rapidly to conclude is that we need a leader, not a cipher, in the Lodge, and that is what we have got with this great Prime Minister, John Howard.