Sectarianism is back in Parliament, well according to Kevin Andrews it is anyway. It was an odd accusation that, on the face of it, didn’t make a great deal of sense.
Kevin Andrews jumped up at the end of question time and accused Health Minister Nicola Roxon of a sectarian attack on the leader of the opposition: “Mr Speaker, there should be no place for this foul sectarian attack we get from this minister in this place.”
It wasn’t initially clear what Andrews got so fired up about, but if you rewind a moment you can see Roxon’s backhander when answering a question about a new mother’s support help line.
“We are very proud of this record. Unfortunately, because the Leader of the Opposition let his personal views get in the way of good policy, that was something that he never supported.”
Whatever your view on Abbott’s role as health minister and his Catholicism (courting controversy with RU486 and abortion counselling to name two), it was a pretty unnecessary barb on the back of a question from one of her own members about mothers’ support line run by nurses which had nothing to do with abortion.
Andrews, also a devout Catholic, has pointed out that Abbott had been the subject of similar baiting a week earlier by Roxon, but it was Andrews not Abbott who took the bait. When Roxon had the right of reply she said Andrews had finally “lost it.”
There’s a couple of things going here, one relates to Tony Abbott and the other to Roxon’s own problems in health.
Abbott’s small target strategy of the last few weeks seems to have paid off to some degree, showing a rise as preferred PM in the latest Newspoll.
The Government thinks that Abbott is open to attacks about his record as health minister and his faith because it plays into the idea of Abbott being a hard-right religious warrior unpopular with women. If they can get a rise out of Abbott painting him as “Latham the sequel” all the better as well.
Rudd signalled the direction of this attack a few weeks ago when he described Abbott as a risk to the “social fabric” of the country.
But the other reason Roxon is keen to look at Abbott’s record is that her own is currently taking heavy fire.
The Rudd Government’s hand picked adviser on mental health, Professor John Mendoza, has recently resigned in disgust, and yesterday wrote in The Australian there is “no vision or commitment from the Rudd Labor government on mental health.”
Roxon made an appearance on the 7:30 report last night in which she was pummelled with criticism on the Government’s record on mental health. Roxon didn’t quite become the latest victim 7:30 report land, but on the back of Mendoza and further attacks by Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry, it came across as exactly what it was: unconvincing crisis management.
Furthermore the much publicised new health deal with the states is yet to actually eventuate with Western Australia still holding out.
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett told the ABC’s Lateline on Monday that he’s not planning on signing up anytime soon.
“We’re not preparing - prepared to hand over control of our goods and services tax revenue. I mean, when was health reform ever about Federal Government control over the GST revenue? I can’t remember that being discussed way back”
The deal could possibly go ahead without WA but it would be messy and, with the Government experiencing big problems over mining in WA , being left out of the health deal would hardly endear Labor further with that electorate.
Health reform, along with the economy, is one of the trump cards the Rudd Government thinks it can play to win an increasingly dicey election. Rather than focussing on Tony Abbott’s record as Health Minister Nicola Roxon might do better to focus on her own, to avoid becoming another angry bard in a Hansard note in history herself.
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