Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. This government has inherited from the former government a public hospital system that has had a billion dollars ripped out of it. It cut back GP training places and other workforce places, leaving us with a crisis in workforce in many parts of the country. It is not a track record to be proud of. What the government has done since it took office is to work with our state and territory counterparts on new Australian healthcare agreements. What the government has said consistently is that it will work with our state and territory colleagues to get new cooperative arrangements to deal with the problems in the health system.

What the Prime Minister said before the election, as opposed to what the member for Dickson just summarised him as saying, was that we would work with our state and territory counterparts and seek a new era of reform. My colleague the Minister for Health and Ageing is well into the journey of the reform agenda. We have already put more money into hospitals. She has a reform commission working with her. The Prime Minister always said that we would aim to work through these issues cooperatively, and that is what we are doing. What he said to the Australian people as well was that, if these processes did not work to a satisfactory outcome, the buck would stop with him. We are doing exactly what the Prime Minister promised before the election: working collaboratively through the processes.

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