Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, until they actually show him bowling a ball, as I am reminded by the member for Brisbane, in which case the imagery very quickly dissipates.

He is always there, associated with the moments of success, but when it comes to the things that are going wrong in this country, they are someone else’s fault. Most particularly, they are the fault of the states. Sometimes it is the fault of the trade union movement. Amazingly, frequently what is going wrong in this contemporary Australia is the fault of the federal opposition! Amazingly, that seems to occur in the view of the Howard government, even though they are in government and we are in opposition. The flaws of contemporary Australia must magically be our fault. So sometimes it is the unions, sometimes it is federal Labor, but more often than not it is the states.

This would all be just clever political rhetoric if it was not for the fact that playing the blame game, most particularly with the states, makes a difference to the lives of ordinary Australians. It has been my privilege to serve for some time now as the shadow minister for health, and I have seen it affect the lives of ordinary Australians as I have travelled around the country. I have met the old man at the Wangaratta Hospital who was trapped in an acute hospital bed for 14 months because they could not find him an aged-care place. I have met the doctor in Bega who told me that the single biggest reason she prescribed antibiotics was for infections in the mouths of those waiting for public dental care. I have been to the new hospital in Kyneton—a brand new building with no staff problems because it is a pretty good region in Victoria to live; it is a nice part of the world—and I have met the administrator who administers the 47 different funding streams that come into her relatively small hospital. She loses all that administrative time because of those 47 different funding streams.

To these practical problems that are out there in our health system the Howard government simply say, ‘Too hard, not our problem, something to do with the states.’ They get on TV and they blame state ministers and the state ministers blame them back. I can tell the Howard government and I am absolutely sure of this, having served the time I have in health: the Australian public are over it. They are sick of it. They are worried not just about the blame game, which is hurting them and their access to care; they are also rightly worried that, if we keep our health system in the same state it is now and we keep money flowing down the same old stovepipes for the next 20, 30 and 40 years, our health system will be unsustainable and broken. The Minister for Health and Ageing has tried to start a fear campaign today—he always does, faced with reform. The true fear of the Australian community is that without reform our health system will not be sustainable in 20, 30 and 40 years.

That is the absolute truth. The minister for health today basically put up a straw man, claimed it was Labor’s policy and then tried to knock that straw man over. Heavens above! Let me assure you that the last person in this country who is ever going to know what Labor’s plans are is the minister for health—the last person. But at the end of his remarks he said something so stupid and so inflammatory it requires response. He said that in effect we wanted to put bureaucrats like the bureaucrats at the Bundaberg Hospital, with the Dr Death scandal, in charge of Australia’s health system. Honest to God! Why did we have the Dr Death scandal? In part it was because this government has not invested enough in training Australian doctors and nurses and largely because this government has been too lazy and too incompetent to get a national registration and accreditation scheme in place.

They are the things at the feet of the Howard government and it stands there opposed to reform. It is opposed to reform today because the minister for health in his heart of hearts knows that the only way of fixing Australia’s health system is to have a big reform process. In the past he has talked about it and on each and every occasion the Prime Minister has slapped him down. Having had so many clips on the ear he is now going to do nothing. Well, the minister for health might not be brave enough and the Howard government might be too stale, too tired and too incompetent, but we are not going to leave Australians without the health system they need and deserve not just for tomorrow but for the 10 years after and the 10 years after that and the 10 years after that. That is one of the new agendas for Labor, and it is an agenda that the Australian community want to hear. (Time expired)

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