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

The preventative health initiatives touted in the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009 are intended to alleviate pressure on hospitals and the health system—a health system this government said it would have fixed by mid this year. Kevin Rudd’s supposed miracle cure for the hospital system has turned out to be nothing short of snake oil—not that this Prime Minister seems to care. A central plank to his election win was his takeover carrot, and now he is setting himself up to repackage it at the next election. Rather than having fixed the system as promised, it is now almost unanimously accepted that Australia’s health system is under unprecedented pressure. Our state public hospitals are at capacity and in many cases nearing breaking point. The most recent public hospital report card of the AMA claims that major metropolitan teaching hospitals operate with a bed occupancy rate of 95 per cent or above—a long way from being fixed. Notwithstanding additional expenditure the report states:

Waiting times are still increasing and waiting lists are still too long.

This is evidence of the Prime Minister pouring money into a system he knows is broken yet refuses to fix. The Prime Minister’s six months of consultation on the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission review is not going to reveal anything different and is clearly just a stalling tactic.

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