Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister, and I refer to the report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing entitled The blame game. I refer to the advice on health funding commissioned by the Prime Minister from Andrew Podger in 2004 which was shelved without discussion, debate or consultation in 2005. Why is the Prime Minister not even interested in examining the possible long-term solutions to the cost shift and blame shift that currently dog our national health and hospital systems?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government did not shelve the Podger report. Indeed, a number of the recommendations from Podger were in fact picked up: not all of them, and no government is obliged to pick up every recommendation given to it, no matter how eminent the public servant may be. Indeed, many of the reforms that have been instituted in the health system over the past couple of years have involved cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states. But I am fascinated that the Leader of the Opposition continues to quote from that House of Representatives report. I understand that in evidence presented to the committee on 26 May by Associate Professor Deborah Green, the past president of the Australian Healthcare Association, which is a national body for the public health care sector, this is what she had to say. Coincidentally it echoes comments I have repeatedly made about Australia’s health system. I think both sides of politics, especially at a state level, do our health system a great deal of damage by constantly denigrating it without acknowledging the fact that with all its flaws the Australian health system is better than any in the rest of the world. This is what Associate Professor Green had to say:

... when we were talking about what is world class ... when we are overseas and get sick, where do we want to be? Almost without exception people want to come to Australia—

to come home—

So whilst I think we are actually very harsh on our own health service ... in fact, it stacks up against just about any health service in the world.

The Leader of the Opposition would do the health service and those who work in it a great service by recognising that with all its faults it is infinitely superior to the health system of any comparable country.