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

Today in question time we saw another opportunity for the Prime Minister to recommit to his election promise and he failed to do it. It has been six weeks now since the deadline has come and gone, the deadline that the Prime Minister set himself back in the election campaign, to fix public hospitals by mid-2009 or he would seek to take financial control of those hospitals. Every Australian heard this Prime Minister say at the last election that he would end the blame game, that on health the buck would stop with him and that he had a solution to fix public hospitals or, if he could not have the hospitals fixed under the control of the state Labor governments, he would seek to take them over.

Over the last 18 months since this government has been elected nothing has happened under this government to improve our health system. In fact, at every turn, decisions that Kevin Rudd has taken have made worse the outcomes across hospitals and the health system around the country. This is a government which has, by way of decisions on private health insurance, those relating to IVF and those relating to GP super clinics, only added pressure to, not taken pressure away from, public hospitals—and for that it should be condemned. This is a government which promised so much but has delivered so little.

It is certainly the case that this government led people to believe that it had a plan. It was the Prime Minister who as far back as about two years ago promised, by way of a speech to a health summit in New South Wales, that he had a plan at that time, two years ago, to fix hospitals. That is how far back this Prime Minister had the Australian people believing that, if elected into government, he was going to carry out this plan as promised. It certainly has been an appalling record when you look at some of the examples that I want to outline as part of this debate today.

The time frame was not set by the opposition; it was set by the government. The Prime Minister made that promise knowing how difficult the task would be, how difficult trying to undo the health system trashing that had taken place by state Labor governments over the last 10 years would be, but nonetheless he made that commitment. Since that time, by driving people out of private health insurance, by making sure that he was pouring more Commonwealth taxpayers’ money into the black hole that is the state Labor governments, he has condemned us to failure in the next 10 years that we have seen over the last 10 years.

But this was a promise that we knew from day one was going to be broken. We knew this promise to fix public hospitals was at risk when that wording was removed from the Prime Minister’s website only a few months ago. It was replaced with ‘improve’, which gave way to ‘assess’. So the signals were there, but Australians chose to believe that the Prime Minister would be true to his word—as of course they should. They gave this Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt. They did not believe that Kevin Rudd was just another Labor premier; they believed that he was going to end the blame game, that he was going to change the system and deliver health outcomes which would be of benefit to this nation’s hospitals and to all of the doctors and nurses—who are so passionate about the health system and who crave changes, just like Australian patients. They were hoping that Kevin Rudd was not just going to break into more state premier speak. But, of course, the opposite has been shown to be the case.

Let us assess just what this government has done. The government and ministers can spin all the stories they like about the supposed wonderful things that they have done in health, but the truth is that, rather than fix hospitals, the Prime Minister has made them worse. And the truth in health is there for all to see in the streets of towns not very far from where we are today. Let me take the Australian people to the streets of Cootamundra, where hundreds of people are protesting this afternoon about the state of health under Kevin Rudd and his state Labor mates. They are protesting about the bleak future of their local hospital. Two weeks ago the Greater Southern Area Health Service in New South Wales told doctors at Cootamundra that their funding would be slashed this financial year—slashed by more than $600,000 from the budget of last year. Cootamundra has a skilled medical staff. It is a town that has two obstetricians, two general surgeons and other qualified staff. But the disastrous decision by Labor could rob this community of that expertise.

Under Rudd Labor, those doctors have been told that they will have to slash the number of medical procedures that they carry out this financial year by more than half. If this decision holds, three of these doctors have indicated they will have to leave the town so that they can practise somewhere where they can keep their skills current. The people of Cootamundra believe that this is simply the thin edge of the wedge and that, with surgery cuts, admissions will fall and, if admissions fall, the hospital may well close. That is how this Rudd government has gone about fixing public hospitals over the last 18 months.

It is ironic that earlier this year the health minister was actually in Cootamundra to open a primary health centre. It was, she said, a blueprint for cooperation between community, private investors and input from government. You can almost hear the sound of the sincerity. One wonders how the people of Cootamundra consider the input from this government this afternoon. Cootamundra is not alone. Apparently a secret government report is calling for emergency surgery at Mount Druitt Hospital in Western Sydney also to be scrapped. The situation at Blacktown Hospital in Sydney’s west is so bad that even a state Labor MP is saying that lives will be lost.

I also wonder whether the young teenager from Dubbo thinks that Mr Rudd has fixed health. She badly injured her thumb recently—it was virtually torn off. She was rushed to Dubbo Base Hospital where doctors decided she had to be flown to Sydney where specialist surgeons could save the thumb. Unfortunately for this girl, it did not happen. It did not happen because it took New South Wales Health 10 hours to get her from Dubbo to Sydney. She could have driven there in half the time. One needs to remember that this is the same hospital that earlier this year could not pay its basic bills: it could not pay for bandages, it could not pay for batteries for vital equipment and it certainly could not pay for food for patients. And that is how Kevin Rudd has fixed health over the last 18 months.

Then there is Townsville, and I turn to my colleague the member for Herbert. The Prime Minister has been in Far North Queensland in the last week. Hopefully, he heard the message about the failures of his Labor colleagues in Queensland, and I hope that he heard it loud and clear. Queensland Health does not believe that Australia’s largest regional hospital in Townsville has the need or the expertise to operate vital life-saving equipment.

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