Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyne for his question. It is a timely one because the government has made an agreement with the Independents and, with the very strong support of regional members on both sides of the House, as well as on the crossbenches, a new application round for the Health and Hospitals Fund will commence by 1 October—very, very shortly. The final details of that application process will be made available. We have existing rules that apply for Health and Hospitals Fund applications, as was noted by, I think, the new member for Denison and others, but we have drafted additional guidelines which emphasise that this will be a particular round for rural and regional investments.

Members might be interested to know that, of the first $3.2 billion that was invested through that fund, 37 per cent of those investments were in rural and regional Australia. So this is not a new area for the government to be focusing on, but we are very pleased that we are able to make additional money available for these applications. It probably will not surprise anyone in the House that it is not just the member for Lyne but the member for New England, the new member for Riverina, the member for Eden Monaro and many others who have already taken the opportunity to ask me about this hospital round. I think there will be a lot of interest in the community and we look forward to high quality applications being made available.

The member also asked for an update on the local hospital networks and particularly for New South Wales. I know this is an area that he has taken a strong interest in. Just as we were coming to question time today, the New South Wales government released, following a public consultation process, its final proposed local hospital network boundaries. It is proposing to go from what is an existing eight local area health services—which I know in your electorate but in many others people had a view were far too big—to 18 local hospital networks. The New South Wales government has proposed that further work be done on some cross-jurisdictional issues, for example, that affect Queanbeyan in the seat of Eden Monaro, and also some boundary issues to the north in the seat of Richmond. I know that in your electorate of Lyne you will be particularly interested that there is a proposed mid-North Coast regional local hospital network.

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Of course, the agreement through COAG means that proposals put by any state or territory government still need to be agreed between governments and signed off by them. We will look very closely at these proposals. We are pleased that New South Wales has gone through a public consultation process, which many members in this House have been actively engaged in. This local hospital network proposal will bring people closer to their service delivery, so that people will be able to have a say and have local clinicians on their local hospital network governing councils. We very much look forward to looking closely at those proposals to ensure that all of our reform objectives are met, but I think the member for Lyne will be very pleased when in the coming days we are able to make available the final details of the special rural and regional Health and Hospitals Fund application round.

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