Senator SIEWERT (4:31 PM) —Mr Deputy President, I seek leave to make a short statement.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Leave is granted for two minutes.

Senator SIEWERT —That is complete cop-out from the federal government. The fact is that there are currently patients in Central Australia who do not have access to dialysis. The Commonwealth is giving money to the Northern Territory government and they are allocating a transportable dialysis facility in Alice Springs to treat additional patients, yet they will not require the Northern Territory to enable new interstate patients to attend that facility. In the meantime, those patients do not have access to dialysis because they cannot move, for example, from Kwinkurra in Western Australia—which is only 40 kilometres from the border of the NT—to Perth. Perhaps these patients should move into the Northern Territory and be located there so they could then get access to the facilities. The Commonwealth is copping out and no-one in Australia should be under any illusions that that is not what is happening.

Question put: