Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I should begin these remarks by congratulating the member for Griffith on his ascension to the opposition leadership. I have always regarded the member for Griffith as an intelligent, articulate and decent man and I have not been disabused of those notions over the past few days. But I will say that he has the job ahead of him now and the job will not just be to construct a wish list; it will be to explain what real improvements he intends to make and to explain how he will actually make a difference. He said today that he was going to produce a new policy agenda over the next few weeks and months. I welcome that, and I think the Australian people will welcome that, because we are helped as a nation if there is a genuine debate between government and opposition on how we can best help the Australian people. Our people will not welcome more name-calling and more undermining of the respect in which this institution is held—more undermining of the respect in which politicians generally are held—by the kinds of attacks which we saw the Leader of the Opposition make today.

It is true that the Prime Minister is a clever politician. He would not have become a party leader and he would not have been Prime Minister for more than a decade were he not a clever politician, but our Prime Minister is much more than that. The fact that the Leader of the Opposition is incapable of giving him credit for being more than just a clever politician not only shows the parallel universe which members opposite inhabit but also shows, if I may say so, an early lack of generosity of spirit which, if sustained, will do the Leader of the Opposition no good at all.

This matter of public importance is:

The need for the federal government to take responsibility for protecting Australia’s prosperity and end the blame game.

All we heard from the new Leader of the Opposition for 15 minutes was a litany of blame. The Prime Minister was being blamed for everything. If you have a problem with the blame game, please start with yourself. Lift your own game. Do not keep blaming the Prime Minister for a whole host of things which, quite frankly, are not his fault. I think it is clear what the tactic of the opposition is going to be over the next 10 days on this big listening, big spruiking tour that they are going on. There will not be any alternative vision, there will not be any new policies, but every single thing that people are unhappy about in our country will be blamed on the Prime Minister. There will be nothing anywhere in our country that is going wrong or that is slightly less than we would wish it to be that members opposite will not blame on the Prime Minister.

I do not say that the government is perfect, I do not say that the Prime Minister is perfect, I do not say that we have all the answers to all problems and I do not say that we cannot in some ways improve; but I do say that a credible opposition has to give credit where it is due. Whatever faults this government has, it has many strengths as well. I think the Leader of the Opposition would gain in stature and win opening plaudits from the Australian people if he were prepared to say on jobs, on wages, on taxes and on national security that there is much that this government has got right—two million new jobs, a 17 per cent increase in real wages, the real wealth of our country is double what it was in 1996 and, when it comes to income, according to the National Centre for Economic Modelling, the average Australian is 25 per cent better off. Some of these things no doubt happened because of reforms put in place by the previous government. Some of these things no doubt happened because of factors beyond the immediate control of this government. But much of this happened because of policies that the government has put in place and a little bit of credit where it is due would stand the opposition leader in good stead.

I want to dwell, if I may, on some hints of policy which are starting to emerge from the opposition leader. We have had in the newspapers over the last few days some suggestions that the opposition were moving towards a single-funder model in health as a way of ending the ‘blame game’. Today we had the Premier of Victoria let the cat out of the bag, because he was asked the question: ‘Kevin Rudd, the new opposition leader, has already called you and the other premiers to talk about federal-state relations. Would you like to give up funding hospitals?’ ‘No,’ says Premier Bracks, ‘we would prefer not to’. Of course, if the states do not want to give up funding hospitals, the federal government cannot force them to because under the Constitution that is the responsibility of the states. Premier Bracks said that he supported a single funding model and went on to say:

You know a contribution for the federal government and a contribution from the state and one body which administers that contribution and make sure that we have simple funding lines and less blame game and less overlap and we certainly support that ...

That is the proposition that Premier Bracks has confirmed is being put by the new opposition leader as a solution to the blame game in health. I have to say it is certainly not a new idea. For instance, back in 2004, before the last election, Premier Bracks commissioned a report by the Allen Consulting Group which called for, in chapter 8, a new health system for all Australians. It called for:

... the formation of a joint Commonwealth-State national body, the Australian Health Commission ...

to administer—

an integrated health system, under which regional health agencies would control a budget of pooled Commonwealth and State funds for acute, primary and community care, pharmaceuticals and aged care.

In fact, the new Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Lalor, said in I think June of that same year, 2004, at the AMA conference:

The principal characteristic of a unified national health system must be that existing Commonwealth money, Medicare, the PBS, payments to nursing homes and payments made under the Australian Health Care Agreements are combined with existing state and territory money for hospital communities and mental health populations, of dental care and the like, and the combined pool of money is then applied to the population’s health needs.

This policy is so old that no less a person than the now scorned former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, said in September that a single funder was an option well worth considering by the Australian Labor Party. But, when you look at this single funder, you see that it is not going to end the blame game. It is not going to end the buck passing. What it is actually going to produce is something akin to the UK National Health Service here in Australia. What this single funder means is the death of Medicare as we know it. In order to end this pernicious blame game, as the Leader of the Opposition calls it, they are going to end Medicare as we know it.

All that money which is currently spent by the federal government on Medicare, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and on nursing homes and other aged-care facilities will be gone, all into a big pot. Who is going to run that big pot? Not the federal government and not the state government but some unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats responsible to no-one. I think health is too important to be left to the bureaucrats. I have to say that, the more Labor’s new policy crystallises, the more I think that health is too important to be left to amateur politicians, politicians in training, politicians who are still thinking more like professors and less like politicians who have thought these issues through.

Let us consider for a second this new national funding body that will run everything. The first thing that the professors who run this national single funder will say is that there is not enough money in the system. Who are they going to go to to get some more money? They are going to go to the state governments. The state governments will say, ‘Not our responsibility.’ Then they will go to the federal government. The federal government will say, ‘Not our responsibility.’ The states will blame the feds, the feds will blame the states and the blame game will continue. But the politicians will have even less power, less capacity, to actually affect the outcome.

Suppose something goes wrong with one of our health institutions under Labor’s brave new world and people go to the state health minister and say, ‘We’re very unhappy about what went wrong in our hospitals.’ The state health minister will say: ‘Not my job. Go and talk to the director-general of the Australian health commission.’ Suppose someone then goes to the federal health minister and says, ‘Something is going terribly wrong in our hospitals.’ The health minister will say: ‘Don’t talk to me. Go and talk to the director-general of the Australian health commission.’ So you might finally get in to see the director-general of the Australian health commission, and I have to say that that individual will be a lot more isolated and a lot more remote than an elected politician who actually has to get around the country. It might take six months or a year. You might eventually get into see this individual. What is he or she going to say? They are going to say, ‘Tough.’

There will be no election to remove that person and no opportunity to grill that person at Senate estimates because that person will not be a federal official. That person will not be a state official. That person will be a health tsar accountable to no-one. Yet that is the proposal that Labor is putting to us—to take away Medicare as we know it, to take away the PBS as we know it, to take away the aged-care system as we know it and to substitute something that would make what is a good but imperfect system much worse. It is a sign of a politically immature Leader of the Opposition that he is prepared to junk something that works in favour of the unknown, in favour of something which any serious reflection would say is just not worth it.

I am all in favour of reform where I am convinced that it is going to be an improvement. I am all in favour of new ideas where I think we really can do better than we are doing now. But I do not want to play games with our health system. I do not want to risk the health of Australians in pursuit of a theoretical system that has not been tried in this country and which, when subject to examination, is almost impossible to explain and almost impossible to detail.

I call on the Leader of the Opposition, lest people start to fear for the future of their health system, to come clean very quickly on exactly what he has in mind. Because I have got to say that for all the faults of the federal government’s administration and the PBS, I reckon we have done a better job than the bureaucrats did at Bundaberg Hospital. I would much rather leave Medicare and the PBS as they are than have the same people that mucked up Bundaberg Hospital and gave us Dr Death in charge of everything. Yet that is what the Leader of the Opposition is proposing.

It is really quite paradoxical. We have got the member for Lalor screaming three weeks ago for the federal government to overturn the expert body—the PBAC—and do everything itself. Now she wants the whole damn system to be given to the sort of people who run the PBAC.

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