Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing tabled its report on health funding, which was aptly named The blame game. It was a report which was supported by all of the members of the committee and which identified problems in our health system.

It is a system that is not broken, but one that is seriously fractured—it has fractures the Howard government has ignored for 10 long years. Instead of showing leadership, the Prime Minister has chosen to play the blame game. We saw in question time today how he has already thumbed his nose at the report and is continuing to play the blame game. He is blaming the states for problems with mental health, blaming the states for problems in hospitals, blaming the states for everything he can rather than showing leadership and moving to solve the problems. The Prime Minister’s response is blame, blame, blame. It is not good enough; the Australian people deserve better.

There is no area in our federation that has suffered more through the division of Commonwealth and state responsibilities than the area of health. The House of Reps committee report, The blame game, identified clearly and succinctly the problems faced by Australians using the health system. It seems that there is barely an Australian who has not been frustrated or hurt by the division of responsibility in our health care system. Australians are rightly sick of the finger-pointing and want a government prepared to take responsibility for our health system. The division of responsibility in health has caused inefficiency in the system and gaps that sick Australians fall through, missing out on the care they deserve.

Elderly, frail and aged Australians are left in acute hospital beds rather than being transferred to aged care facilities. This is largely because there is little incentive for the federal government to provide aged care beds, given that the state governments are forking out for expensive acute hospital beds. Currently 60 per cent of Australians with mental illness completely miss out on care because they fall through the gaps. There are 650,000 Australians on public dental health waiting lists because the government fails to accept any responsibility. Inefficiencies within the health system have cost at least $2 billion a year.

The committee considered four models. It was presented with models by experts in the area of health reform. There were models where the state took full responsibility, models where the Commonwealth took full responsibility, models where there was a pooling of Commonwealth-state funds and models where there was managed competition—the Scotland model. It is also important to share with the House that Andrew Podger, who was appointed by the Prime Minister to head a task force to look into health within Australia, gave evidence to the committee. It was pretty obvious from his response that he believed that the Commonwealth should take full responsibility for health.

Let us look at a timeline of the Howard government’s failure to do anything to bring about health reform. Back in February 2003, the then Minister for Health and Ageing, Kay Patterson, boycotted talks with the states and territories. In April 2003, the Prime Minister announced that the 2003-08 health care agreements would not include reform measures. In August 2003, state premiers walked out of COAG over the Howard government’s refusal to address health reform. The health minister at the time issued a media release saying that once the states and territories signed the health care agreements, all parties could all then move on to addressing the reform agenda, but no reform agenda appeared. The Prime Minister provided an outline paper on the process of health reform. In 2004, the health minister challenged the states to stop complaining, and the then premier of New South Wales agreed to hand over the hospitals to the Commonwealth, but the government refused. The health minister said, ‘The sooner the states are not involved in the health field the better,’ but, on the other hand, he refused to embrace heath reform.

Each and every day that John Howard plays the blame game and fails to take up the challenge of health reform, it is the Australian people who suffer. It is time for the Prime Minister to do what the committee report says he should: adopt a health reform agenda focused on prevention, early intervention and primary care. Such a system would save health costs down the track, maximise the productivity of the workforce and deliver to the Australian people. (Time expired)