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

I notice that some of those opposite are interjecting already about the fact that this is a program for the future, as if for two years the government has been inactive on this matter. I would say to the honourable members interjecting that, over the course of the last two years, the government has already increased GP training places by 35 per cent. That is in our first two years in office. In our first two years in office we have increased the overall Australian government investment in the public hospital system by 50 per cent. That is some $64 billion. For the first time the Australian government is out there investing in the nation’s cancer related infrastructure, a $1 billion-plus investment, not just in the big cities but in integrated cancer care centres right across the nation as well. Those opposite interject with ‘What have you been doing for two years?’ I say: a lot more than the previous government ever did in 12 years.

When it comes to the future, we believe that properly funding a National Health and Hospitals Network is the right course of action for Australia. We need to ensure that we have a system which is properly funded nationally and that is properly run locally through local hospital networks, that we have sufficient hospital beds, that we have sufficient doctors and that we have sufficient nurses. You cannot do that if you simply stand to one side and say, ‘We just hope it gets fixed up in the morning,’ or ‘We’re gunna do something about it,’ on the eve of the next election, which is what a certain ‘gunna’-represented officer said he would do on the eve of the last election, having been health minister for four or five years.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition and to the parliament at large: the government has put forward a plan, a National Health and Hospitals Network for the future, funded nationally, run locally and building on the record investments we have already undertaken in health and hospitals in our first two years in office. That stands in stark contrast to someone who, as health minister of Australia, reached in and gouged $1 billion out of the public hospital system of Australia. They can run—

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