Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

We could not have that. He continued:

So in his own words they are seeking to avoid responsibility and are seeking to blame—to avoid responsibility and engage in the blame game. The minister at the table also had this to say about the health and hospital system:

Cost-shifting is unavoidable. You can’t stop it, so you might as well just live with it.

How is that for national political leadership? We have massive cost shift and blame shift across the health and hospital system of Australia, and one of the most senior ministers in this government, responsible directly for that portfolio, turns around and says:

You can’t stop it, so you might as well just live with it.

The Australian people expect a bit better. They actually want their governments to try. This is really important. It affects people in hospitals, in acute beds and in emergency departments. It affects those seeking to find a place in aged care as well.

Speaking of aged care, on any one night in Australia it is estimated that there are 1,684 people in public hospital beds who should be receiving aged care treatment. The government have failed to meet the targets that they themselves established of 88 residential aged care beds for every 1,000 people aged 70 or above. The current shortage of aged care beds, according to the government’s own figures, is 4,613. In 10 years, the Howard government have turned the surplus of 800 aged care beds in 1996 into a 4,613 shortfall in June 2006. Their response to this is: ‘Who can I blame? Blame the states, blame anybody else, but do not blame me, because I am not taking any responsibility.’

Minister at the table, the Australian people are fed up with that. It has actually got to its use-by date. They want something different. When it comes to dental care we see the same thing. One of the first acts of the Howard government in 1996 was to eliminate the Commonwealth Dental Health Program, citing the need to make savings. Since then, the government has consistently claimed that it is not the Commonwealth’s responsibility to fund dental care, despite it being in the Constitution as such, that the Keating government never intended the CDHP to be an ongoing program and that it has fulfilled its goals of addressing waiting lists. The Prime Minister said in question time in December:

The states are responsible for the dental care of their communities, and it is about time they carried out those responsibilities.

So what is the response to the crisis in dental care? The blame game—blame the states, blame anybody else, but do not hold us responsible.

But this blame game is not just in health care, it is not just in hospitals, it is not just in aged care and it is not just in dental care. We see it in climate change—it is everyone else’s responsibility. We see it in water policy, where it is again the states’ responsibility, never the Commonwealth’s. We see it in schools, we see it in TAFEs, we see it in training and we see it in immigration. The states cannot be blamed for immigration, but the government are blaming everyone other than themselves for the complete implosion of the effective management of the immigration detention system. We also see the blame game and the avoidance of responsibility with the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal. We see it with Iraq. The Prime Minister today was at his best when he said the Baker report is all about a little change in tactics. This Prime Minister cannot accept responsibility—I asked him this three times—for the fact that policies in Iraq are not working. The Baker report says so. His spin line back—as the king of spin, the clever politician—is, ‘It is a change of tactics.’ That is about a change of strategy. It is about a change of policy. It is not fiddling with the tactics.

When it comes to this Christmas, working families will suffer as well. We are going to hit the ground in the days ahead. We are going to take our alternative vision for the country’s future out to the people. Over 10 days we hope to get to every capital city in the country and we intend to outline our alternatives for the future. We are not content with just being there. We are in the business of politics to make a difference—and make a difference we will.

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