Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

congratulates the Rudd Government on reaching its historic COAG agreement on health and hospital reform;

(2)

acknowledges the massive investment by the Government in training more doctors and health professionals, cutting waiting lists, improving services in emergency departments and providing cancer care and services throughout Australia; and

(3)

notes that the Leader of the Opposition, when Health Minister, reduced funding for public hospitals by $1 billion.

It gives me great pleasure to move the motion tonight to thank and congratulate the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and Ageing and the executive for reaching a historic COAG agreement to deliver better health care and better hospitals for Australian working families. The Rudd government’s National Health and Hospitals Network reform plan gives a commitment to permanently fund 60 per cent of public health costs, 60 per cent of capital projects and 60 per cent of the teaching and research in our public hospitals. The Australian government will also deliver $7.3 billion in additional funding over the next five years to provide 1,300 new subacute hospital beds and an additional 2,500 aged-care beds. The government is also committed to elective surgery being delivered on time for 95 per cent of Australians; a historic agreement to reshape mental health services and help 20,000 extra young people get access to mental health services; more coordinated care in general practice for patients with diabetes; a Commonwealth takeover of primary care; and a Commonwealth takeover of aged care.

The government will invest $1.2 billion in training and supporting more doctors, nurses and allied health professionals as part of Building a Health and Hospitals Network for Australia’s Future. This includes an additional $520 million investment in Australia’s nurses. In total, the government’s investments will train almost 5,500 GPs and 680 specialist doctors and expand and improve support for more than 4,600 full-time equivalent nurses working in general practice, as well as other nurses working and training in aged care and rural areas. It will support 800 allied health professionals working and training in rural areas over the next four years, which is significant to the people in my electorate of Solomon.

Hardworking doctors and nurses in our emergency departments do a great job, but they need more support to deliver working families the timely services they need. The most recent figures show that, currently, almost one in three patients—almost 600,000 people each year—wait longer than eight hours in an emergency department before they are admitted to hospital. Almost one in three patients wait longer than is clinically recommended. The new national four-hour target for emergency department access in public hospitals will be established under the new National Health and Hospitals Network. The government will provide $150 million from 1 July this year in upfront payments to help states and territories with the costs of moving towards the four-hour target. This investment will help provide the additional capacity, equipment and planning that is needed to deliver improvements in emergency departments and lift hospitals to the new high standards required under the National Health and Hospitals Network. A further $350 million will be available in reward funding for meeting or beating the target.

This investment will mean that families can be confident that when they or a loved one need urgent care in an emergency department they will no longer have to spend all night sitting in waiting rooms or waiting for a bed. The new National Health and Hospitals Network will also mean that doctors and nurses will have more say in the way their local hospital is run, through local hospital networks and new primary healthcare organisations. This fundamental reform and the government’s investments will ensure that our health workforce meets the needs of Australians today and the growing demand for health services into the future.

Without central reform, spiralling health costs could have consumed entire revenues raised by states and territories. The agreement delivers that reform, putting health funding onto a sustainable footing and delivering better health and better hospitals for working families across Australia. For more than a decade, Australia suffered as public hospital emergency departments struggled to cope with two million extra presentations and reduced funding from the former government. We know that the states and territories did suffer under the previous government, when Mr Abbott was the Minister for Health and Ageing and ripped a billion dollars out of the hospital system.

In my electorate of Solomon, the efforts of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health and Ageing have been significant. On Friday I did some filming of some government funded sites, such as the GP superclinic in Palmerston, which is nearing completion, and the new medical school, which will be under threat if the former government is returned to office. The oncology unit is now operational—

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