Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition, like all Australians, is greatly concerned about what is happening in our public hospital systems right around the country. For the last 10 or 12 years—and, in some cases, since even longer ago—Australians have been subjected to a complete mismanagement and downgrading of services right around the country. There are very few exceptions as you look state by state and territory by territory for good practice operating in our public hospitals as they have been managed by the Labor Party.

The greatest frustration for the health professionals around the country—the nurses, the doctors and all of those people, particularly in primary health care, who are involved in public hospitals—is the way in which the public hospitals have been managed over the last decade and, as I say, in some cases even longer. They are worried because they have a service to deliver to people who are in need. Australians arrive at accident and emergency sections and at public hospitals looking for service. They have a demand for the services—in some cases, of course, in emergency situations—and it is the great and never-ending frustration of those people who deliver these services that, because of the way in which these services have been managed, they cannot provide an adequate and timely response to those patients who are most in need. It is about time, as we approach the 12-month mark, to call to account this federal government for some of the promises they made during the last election campaign and for the way in which, over the course of the last 12 months, they have not delivered on those promises or provided any idea of how they are going to turn around this mess that their state Labor colleagues have managed to create in a dozen years. This is a situation which is untenable.

The remarkable admission today in this chamber by the Acting Prime Minister of this country that the Labor Party would not honour its election promise to go to a referendum if the states and the federal government do not resolve this matter in relation to state public hospitals is a disgrace. It is a disgrace because this Prime Minister said to the Australian people during the course of the last election campaign that on health the buck would stop with him. Over the course of the last 12 months, as was raised by the leader of the National Party today, in hospitals such as in Dubbo and others around the country spending has been going backwards, which is resulting in worse outcomes for patients in hospitals right around the country, and that is unacceptable. When Australians listened to this Prime Minister at the last election, they heard him say that he would fix health and that, if he did not fix it with the states by 2009, he would go to a referendum. The government has watered down its commitment during question time today, and the Australian people should recognise that for what it is: a pathetic action by a government which is on the ropes in terms of delivering outcomes to the Australian people.

People who listen to this chamber regularly know that whenever somebody from the government comes into this chamber—it does not matter whether they are delivering a speech on health, the economy or social security—the word that they use religiously is ‘decisive’. ‘Decisive’ is a word that they have to use and have been directed to use because this government, the Rudd-Swan government, is seen as being indecisive. It is a government that has set up any number of reviews and advisory councils. It has put all of this together but with no concrete outcome that is going to result in better health outcomes for the Australian people. So, when the Australian public listen to members of the Australian Labor Party and in particular this Prime Minister talk about decisive action, they should know that it is not an indication of any decisive action that the government has taken; it is merely a delivery of the advice that has been given to them by focus groups operated by the hollow men who work in the Prime Minister’s office.

Many people around the country would watch the acclaimed series The Hollowmen on the ABC. Some people see it as a comedy and other people see it as a documentary. Many people see it as a documentary because they see in the day-to-day actions of this government exactly what happens on The Hollowmen being played out by the Rudd Labor government. This is a government which is not serious about delivering for the public; it is serious about delivering for itself. It is not interested in honouring its election commitments. What it has done over the last 12 months is facilitate further downgrading of services by state governments in the public hospital arena. It has come up with this mantra, no doubt devised by the focus groups in The Hollowmen, that it needs to end the blame game. ‘Prime Minister,’ the focus groups would have said, ‘use that phrase, because the Australian people want to hear you say it.’ So he says it, but what does it mean and what has it meant over the last 12 months? It has meant that this is a Prime Minister who has used that term to disguise the inaction and, I think, the complete failure of state Labor governments around the country in their obligations in public health.

This federal government has made a number of health decisions in the last 12 months which really are all about the way in which health has been delivered in the states over the last 12 years. This Rudd Labor government is replicating the hospital management style that Nathan Rees has perfected in New South Wales, that Anna Bligh has perfected in Queensland and that many other state leaders have perfected around the country. If we continue to see this health minister and this Prime Minister managing the federal health system like their state Labor counterparts over the last 12 years then heaven help the long-term future of health in this country.

This debate today has been prompted by the enormous number of emails and phone calls that I have received from people in distress all around the country—people who have had terrible experiences in public hospitals and people whose lives have been devastated by the way in which public hospitals are run and the way in which that is condoned by this federal government. They are devastated by the treatment that they receive and the lack of timely treatment.

That, of course, is highlighted in the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2008, which was released yesterday. It is a damning report, to say the least. It reports that the hospital funding split between the Commonwealth and the states and territories requires more attention. It talks about public hospital capacity having fallen by 67 per cent in the last 20 years. The AMA calculates that 3,750 beds are required to decrease occupancy levels to 85 per cent. Eighty-five per cent occupancy is important because it is considered the safe working level. The royal hospitals in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth and Sydney’s North Shore and Prince Alfred royal hospitals are closer to 90 per cent occupancy, and some are closer to 95 per cent occupancy. This position is something that is condoned day in, day out by this Rudd Labor government. It has to come to an end. The report says:

Despite minor recent improvement, less than two-thirds of emergency department patients classified as urgent are currently seen within the recommended 30 minutes.

The majority of these issues are, of course, state and territory issues, but this is a situation which has festered and deteriorated over the last 12 months under the watch of this Rudd Labor government.

The Labor Party, not just in health but in a number of areas, have embarked on a rewrite of history, a propaganda campaign talking down the economy that they inherited from the coalition government at the end of last year. They have tried to rewrite history in relation to the way in which we managed the economy as well as health. Let me put on the record a few statistics which I think demonstrate the proud record of the Howard government in relation to health. The total investment in health and ageing in 1995-96 under Labor was just under $20 billion, at $19.5 billion. In 2007-08 the coalition committed $51.8 billion to health funding, a real increase of 88 per cent. That is a remarkable statistic. Labor spent $6 billion under the MBS in 1995-96—bear that in mind. Under the coalition $12.5 billion was spent in 2007-08, an increase in real terms of 48 per cent. Do not listen to anything that the Labor government have got to say in relation to health. Their track record proves that they are as fraudulent on health as they are on the economy.

It is about time that the states and territories started to own up to their responsibilities and that this health minister stopped whimpering in a corner with the Prime Minister instead of calling to account what has been a disgraceful display by state and territory governments. The reality is that the coalition government in relation to Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme funding in 2007-08 spent $7.1 billion, a real increase of 110 per cent, compared to 2.4 per cent when Labor were last in power. We are not going to stand on this side of the parliament and tolerate some rewrite of history by the Labor government. We are not going to tolerate some sort of propaganda campaign which holds them up as having had a great period in office prior to 1996 and which says that it was the coalition government that failed in its responsibility in relation to health over the 11 years that we were in government.

The fact remains that we excelled and provided very good outcomes in the areas we had responsibility for during the period of 1996 to 2007—not to say that we had it perfect or that more could not be done. What we did was to embark on a way in which we could hold the state and territory governments to account, because they have run the public hospital system into the ground, and it will take years to rectify. If this health minister and the government are going to continue the form of the last 12 months—that is, to be completely uncritical of the state and territory governments—then this situation will only continue to deteriorate and will take even longer to rectify. The government should be condemned for their inaction to date, and they should be condemned for managing the hospital system in exactly the same way as Nathan Rees. When people think about federal Labor in health, they should think about state Labor in health. When people think about the Prime Minister and Nicola Roxon in health, they should think about Nathan Rees and Reba Meagher.

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