Doyle style ‘will be different’

By Kath Gannaway
STATE Opposition Leader, Robert Doyle, will send Opposition health spokesman, David Davis, to the Upper Yarra early next year to look at the lack of after-hours medical services.
Mr Doyle made the commitment during an interview last week with the Mail at the home of Liberal candidate for Evelyn, Christine Fyffe.
He was in town to attend a campaign fund-raiser for Ms Fyffe as Liberal Party candidates, including Ms Fyffe, and former Yarra Ranges councillors, David Hodgett for Kilsyth, Clive Larkman for Monbulk along with Simon Wildes for Gembrook, head into an election year.
Health services was one of a number of areas, including police, education, transport, freeway tolls and the Melbourne 2030 planning vision, where Victorians could expect a different style of government under a Liberal banner should the tables turn in November 2006.
But, a major focus would be on waste and mismanagement, bringing major projects in on budget and removing red tape.
On health, Mr Doyle said his party had a policy, which while it should not to be taken as a commitment, could be looked at, of using community health service facilities to provide a 24 hour nurse who could offer advice, call on a locum doctor or, where necessary expedite attendance at a hospital.
The police issues, he said was not about how much money has been invested, or even how many police have been recruited. “It’s about outcomes,” he said.
“They (Labor) say they have put on an extra 600 police but we say ‘where are they’. If they are short in Healesville and short in Lilydale,” he said, responding to an update on the local situation from the Evelyn candidate, “where are all these police”?
He said too many police were tied up in task forces and with administration duties.
“My focus would be on community policing; getting police on to the streets and back into the community, not locked behind desks and not in task forces,” he said.
Mr Doyle said a Liberal government would arrest what he called the ‘dumbing down’ of the VCE and look at pre-school accessibility.
“This (low pre-school numbers) was something the Bracks Government criticised us for and we find now, six years later, their track record is worse than ours.”
Stealing himself against an emotional response on transport – having been held up in gridlocks at Ringwood and Lilydale on his way to the Yarra Valley – Mr Doyle said transport had to be looked at not just in terms of extending light-rail services further and further out, or putting on more and more buses, but in terms of usage.
Looking towards the November 25 election, Mr Doyle said he was delighted with his team.
“There were a lot of people standing up here, all seats were hotly contested,” he said.
He said he asked for local champions – people steeped in their communities – and that he got them in Fyffe, Hodgett, Larkman and Wildes.
“I want people who have really local credentials, who know their communities and the issues in those communities. People want someone who understands local issues and who will go in to bat for them,” he said.
“I am delighted with the calibre of people I have been sent.”