House of Representatives
Tuesday 20 October 2020

Listening to government members today would lead you to believe that nothing has gone wrong, everything is perfect and we live in a unique place in the world. Well, the facts, when it comes to being prepared for COVID-19, need to be put to this parliament. It has not only cost Australians more money than they've obtained; it's wasted their time. We've seen a lack of resources available and we've seen cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker when we can least afford changes to the unemployment benefit. Coronavirus has been a time for leaders to come forward, bring good policy, support our community and protect our economy. Instead, just the week before last, we saw a budget that leaves thousands of Australians behind and heading into poverty.

Australia was badly unprepared for a pandemic. In its seven years in office, this government hadn't run a single pandemic preparedness drill. It had run our national medical stockpile down to dangerous levels, with less than one mask for every Australian, and with no gloves, gowns or goggles in some cases. We then saw 28 deaths linked to the Ruby Princess, when the Commonwealth is responsible for our borders and the Prime Minister had promised 'bespoke arrangements for cruise ships'. As of yesterday we have seen 683 deaths in residential aged care, a sector the Commonwealth funds and regulates.

I want to highlight and compare this to my home state, where we've seen outstanding leadership when dealing with the COVID crisis by our Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. In Queensland there have been zero new cases today and there are four active cases, 1,164 cases in total and 1.1 million tested. Quite frankly, Queensland has led the way in this country. Yet somehow, in the middle of this chaos, when the states of Victoria and New South Wales were still getting on top of this virus, we had this LNP federal government working hand in glove with the LNP state opposition leader in Queensland, Deb Frecklington. She, aided and abetted by her federal colleagues, called for our borders to be open 64 times when we could least afford that and it would have had a catastrophic effect in Queensland. We saw member after member here and senator after senator in the other place, demanding that our borders open. The Prime Minister called for the Queensland borders to be opened numerous times—along with the Minister for Home Affairs, himself a COVID spreader in my home state, who said that the Queensland Premier had 'no consistency, no compassion and no common sense'. He called her 'pig-headed'.

I can tell you that in my home state the Premier is regarded as an outstanding leader, someone who has saved Queensland through strong action on health defence. All the state Queensland LNP members put up all the quotes on opening the borders and then they quietly took them off their Facebook pages. We know what's happened. We're not going to talk about borders anymore. No-one's talking about opening the borders. They've all gone quiet. They've all gone back to their electorates and heard the message loud and clear. The member for Fisher and the member for Fairfax were in this place, jumping to their feet, demanding that the borders be opened. Now there is silence because they realise what an outstanding job our Premier has done.

In 11 days the people of Queensland will decide between a strong leader who has a plan and the LNP opposition leader, who is frankly a risk to our borders and a risk to our economy. We know it is in the LNP DNA to cut, sack and sell. They do that at a Commonwealth level and they have a proud record of doing that in our home state. The last time the LNP were in government in Queensland, we saw 4,400 health staff in Queensland sacked. We saw maternity services cut and we saw midwives sacked. We know that, in the five years since the Palaszczuk government was elected, we've seen the hiring of 7,358 more nurses, 2,450 more doctors, 2,031 more health practitioners and 812 more paramedics. So we know that, when there is a pandemic, Queensland is well equipped, fit for the purpose of dealing with a health crisis, and now the Queensland government is rebuilding. If only this federal government would take a leaf out of the Queensland government's book; if only this government would actually look at what strong leadership is all about—not cutting, not sacking and not selling our essential services.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): The member for Oxley, before you retreat, you made a comment there regarding the Home Affairs minister that I'm deeming to be unparliamentary, and I will get you to withdraw it.

MR DICK: What was that?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The 'COVID spreader'. In the context of this pandemic, I think that's unparliamentary.

Mr DICK: Sure. I will withdraw and say that he suffered from COVID.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.