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

I would like to thank the very many members who have spoken on this bill from both sides of the House. It would be fair to say from listening to the contributions that people feel very strongly about making sure that our hospitals can deliver for local communities. The member for Lyne, the final speaker on the bill, is a very passionate advocate for making sure that his local community is well looked after. I can indicate to the member for Lyne that the government will be supporting his amendment when the opportunity comes for that. However, I do need to indicate to him and to the House that we fundamentally disagree with his assessment of what the amendments mean. I will be addressing that in more detail when I move those amendments.

Let me go to the summing-up and deal with those issues first and then for the convenience of the House I might mention that we intend to move the amendments together as a group. The National Health Reform Amendment (National Health Performance Authority) Bill 2011 establishes a key element of the Australian government's health reform agenda. (Quorum formed) I am sure that members are delighted to be here to know that the National Health Performance Authority will act as a watchdog over the performance of both public and private hospitals, local hospital networks and Medicare Locals. It will regularly report comparative information on the performance of these bodies and give the public information in respect of consistently poor performance. Performance monitoring will support the improvement in healthcare delivery, safety and quality by all of these services. Poor performance will be identified to allow for remediation and superior performance will be identified to allow for the dissemination of best practice approaches.

The establishment of the authority is a key part of the health reform agreement signed by all states and territories this month. We then introduced the legislation into this House in order to meet the time frames of the February COAG meeting but also were open to consider amendments which might be suggested from the states, the committee inquiry in this place or the Senate committee inquiry. State and territory health ministers agreed to the detail of the legislation and how it will interact with their health systems at a meeting of the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council on 7 June. Amendments to reflect the detail of this agreement were distributed by the government in the last session of parliament.

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