Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the honourable member asked me a question about the AMA report into the state of the nation’s hospitals. The state of the nation’s hospitals as it exists did not mysteriously appear as a consequence of what has happened in the previous six months, 12 months or 18 months. In fact, it is the product of long-term non-investment in the public hospital system of Australia by the previous government. Let us be up-front about that. What do they have to say about the 650,000 Australians who were left on public dental care waiting lists as a result of the them scrapping the Commonwealth dental care program? That is exactly what we inherited: underfunding for the hospitals, money being ripped out, older Australians being left to languish in hospitals and preventing others from properly occupying those hospital beds for the purposes of elective surgery and other procedures, capping of the number of GP training places and 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists. They have the audacity to stand here in this parliament and claim that they have no responsibility for the state of the nation’s hospitals, as identified in the AMA report—which the honourable member just referred to. Let us just get real about this debate and get real about what has been inherited here, as a set of historical problems.

The honourable member asks what we are doing about these challenges. I draw his attention to the following. In November the health minister announced a $64 billion health and hospitals agreement, a 50 per cent increase on the Liberals’ last healthcare agreement. That is what we are doing. Secondly, for the first time, we are investing $750 million to help take pressure off emergency departments. I ask this of the member for Dickson: how much did the previous government invest directly in seeking to take pressure off emergency departments? Nothing, not a dollar. How much did they invest when it came to bringing down elective surgery waiting times? Nothing. We have invested some $600 million. How much did they invest in subacute care beds? The answer is that I do not know, but we are investing $500 million. These are the practical measures that we have put into place so far, quite apart from the investment in GP superclinics—a $275 million investment—and quite apart from our increased attention to overall health workforce training requirements. That is simply stage 1 of what we have sought to do in the two years that we have been in office.

We have also outlined through the Bennett commission of review what constitutes two overall strategic options for the long-term future. The time frame for considering those is as I outlined to the House yesterday in response to the honourable member’s question. If he is going to ask questions about health and hospitals, let him not simply airbrush away the impact of 12 years of simple ignorance, non-attendance and non-investment in the hospital system of Australia. If you are going to raise questions about the hospital system, tell us what you have done in the past and tell us what you will do in the future. We have a plan to deal with both.

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