Personal Explanation

NATIONAL HEALTH AND HOSPITALS REFORM COMMISSION

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:54): I seek leave to make a personal explanation.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?

Ms CHAPMAN: Correct.

Leave granted.

Ms CHAPMAN: Today in question time, the Minister for Health quoted me in respect of a press release during a time when he was answering a question from one of the government members on the alleged benefits of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report earlier this week.

Although the Hansard is not yet available, my notes indicate that he quoted these lines—I think in full—from my media release:

Prime Minister Rudd gets to pick up the easy parts, leave us the hard parts and totally ignores the crisis areas.

He also quoted this sentence:

We are happy for that to remain the arrangement as long as we are provided with adequate funding and support in other areas, such as ageing.

As I say, I am not certain whether the whole of those two sentences were referred to, but I say to the house that I have been misrepresented in that, subsequent to those quotes, the minister then claimed to the house that, in some way, this suggests that the opposition supports the transfer of the health jurisdiction to the federal arena. I utterly and totally refute that. Indeed, I say to the house and to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that, on those occasions when the former minister for health said publicly that the system was stuffed and confirmed that she would support it going to Canberra, and when the Treasurer of this government has done this—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I believe that the honourable member is beginning to stray from her personal explanation. I draw her back to the matter.

Ms CHAPMAN: Thank you. I simply assert that on occasions when this has been claimed it has been refuted that the opposition in any way supports the transfer of powers. I, who have been misrepresented here, make absolutely clear to the house that in no way do I think that a Canberra bureaucrat will be any better equipped to handle issues of health than a state bureaucrat. I utterly refute the assertion that there is some quantum leap from this statement to suggest that the opposition supports the transfer of the jurisdiction of health from state administration and state government responsibility to federal government responsibility.