Senator BRANDIS (3:19 PM) —I too would like to take note of Senator Ludwig’s answer to Senator Boyce’s question. Before Senator Furner leaves the chamber can I say that nobody would criticise Senator Furner for coming to the defence of his partner, who is, apparently, an employee of Queensland Health. Without in any way casting any disrespect on Senator Furner’s motives, it did rather seem to me to be emblematic of the Labor Party attitude to health policy in Queensland—that it is all about looking after the interests of the staff and it is never about looking after the interests of the patient. That is why, when Dr Christopher Davis, the president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, launched yesterday the Queensland AMA’s report card on the state public hospital system, which bears the rather discouraging title Poor state of health, he was moved to describe the Queensland health system as:

As somebody who lives in Queensland, I can assure you, Mr Deputy President, that that is, if anything, a generous description of the Queensland public health system.

I know the Australian Labor Party are very good at blaming other people for what happens on their watch. We have yet to hear the Rudd government put up its hand and say, ‘We, the Australian government, are responsible for the loss of Australian jobs.’ They would rather blame it on phenomena occurring overseas. But I think it is very, very difficult for the Labor government in Queensland, which has been in power for 11 years—and Labor has been in power in Queensland for all but 2½ of the last 20 years—to blame anyone other than themselves for the state of the Queensland health system. The report of the AMA identified these shortcomings with the Queensland health system:

And the criticisms go on and on.

One thing Mr Beattie, the former Premier of Queensland, that master of political deception, was very eager to commit to was the reduction of hospital waiting lists in Queensland. And what has happened on the Labor Party’s watch? They have grown. They have grown exponentially to—what was it, Senator Boyce?

Senator Boyce —Thirty-one thousand.

Senator BRANDIS —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)