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

It is always good to hear from the member for Boothby and we hope to see him back on the front bench before long—once he has a reconciliation meeting with the Leader of the Opposition. I say in response to the Leader of the Opposition’s question about casemix funding that we are about providing funding to local hospital networks which actually provides support for the hospital services delivered on the ground. We will not support in the future the system he backed for five years which provided a blank cheque, a block grant, to state and territory health bureaucracies to spend wherever—maybe not even on health. This is the fundamental nature of the reform that we are bringing about.

The second point I would make to the Leader of the Opposition is that if he were really interested in health reform we might have heard just an element of his alternative policy when he addressed the AMA last night. Instead, we had one exercise—

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