Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Dickson proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the government to deliver an effective public hospital system.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition, like all Australians, is greatly concerned about what is happening in our public hospital systems right around the country. For the last 10 or 12 years—and, in some cases, since even longer ago—Australians have been subjected to a complete mismanagement and downgrading of services right around the country. There are very few exceptions as you look state by state and territory by territory for good practice operating in our public hospitals as they have been managed by the Labor Party.

The greatest frustration for the health professionals around the country—the nurses, the doctors and all of those people, particularly in primary health care, who are involved in public hospitals—is the way in which the public hospitals have been managed over the last decade and, as I say, in some cases even longer. They are worried because they have a service to deliver to people who are in need. Australians arrive at accident and emergency sections and at public hospitals looking for service. They have a demand for the services—in some cases, of course, in emergency situations—and it is the great and never-ending frustration of those people who deliver these services that, because of the way in which these services have been managed, they cannot provide an adequate and timely response to those patients who are most in need. It is about time, as we approach the 12-month mark, to call to account this federal government for some of the promises they made during the last election campaign and for the way in which, over the course of the last 12 months, they have not delivered on those promises or provided any idea of how they are going to turn around this mess that their state Labor colleagues have managed to create in a dozen years. This is a situation which is untenable.

The remarkable admission today in this chamber by the Acting Prime Minister of this country that the Labor Party would not honour its election promise to go to a referendum if the states and the federal government do not resolve this matter in relation to state public hospitals is a disgrace. It is a disgrace because this Prime Minister said to the Australian people during the course of the last election campaign that on health the buck would stop with him. Over the course of the last 12 months, as was raised by the leader of the National Party today, in hospitals such as in Dubbo and others around the country spending has been going backwards, which is resulting in worse outcomes for patients in hospitals right around the country, and that is unacceptable. When Australians listened to this Prime Minister at the last election, they heard him say that he would fix health and that, if he did not fix it with the states by 2009, he would go to a referendum. The government has watered down its commitment during question time today, and the Australian people should recognise that for what it is: a pathetic action by a government which is on the ropes in terms of delivering outcomes to the Australian people.

People who listen to this chamber regularly know that whenever somebody from the government comes into this chamber—it does not matter whether they are delivering a speech on health, the economy or social security—the word that they use religiously is ‘decisive’. ‘Decisive’ is a word that they have to use and have been directed to use because this government, the Rudd-Swan government, is seen as being indecisive. It is a government that has set up any number of reviews and advisory councils. It has put all of this together but with no concrete outcome that is going to result in better health outcomes for the Australian people. So, when the Australian public listen to members of the Australian Labor Party and in particular this Prime Minister talk about decisive action, they should know that it is not an indication of any decisive action that the government has taken; it is merely a delivery of the advice that has been given to them by focus groups operated by the hollow men who work in the Prime Minister’s office.

Many people around the country would watch the acclaimed series The Hollowmen on the ABC. Some people see it as a comedy and other people see it as a documentary. Many people see it as a documentary because they see in the day-to-day actions of this government exactly what happens on The Hollowmen being played out by the Rudd Labor government. This is a government which is not serious about delivering for the public; it is serious about delivering for itself. It is not interested in honouring its election commitments. What it has done over the last 12 months is facilitate further downgrading of services by state governments in the public hospital arena. It has come up with this mantra, no doubt devised by the focus groups in The Hollowmen, that it needs to end the blame game. ‘Prime Minister,’ the focus groups would have said, ‘use that phrase, because the Australian people want to hear you say it.’ So he says it, but what does it mean and what has it meant over the last 12 months? It has meant that this is a Prime Minister who has used that term to disguise the inaction and, I think, the complete failure of state Labor governments around the country in their obligations in public health.

This federal government has made a number of health decisions in the last 12 months which really are all about the way in which health has been delivered in the states over the last 12 years. This Rudd Labor government is replicating the hospital management style that Nathan Rees has perfected in New South Wales, that Anna Bligh has perfected in Queensland and that many other state leaders have perfected around the country. If we continue to see this health minister and this Prime Minister managing the federal health system like their state Labor counterparts over the last 12 years then heaven help the long-term future of health in this country.

This debate today has been prompted by the enormous number of emails and phone calls that I have received from people in distress all around the country—people who have had terrible experiences in public hospitals and people whose lives have been devastated by the way in which public hospitals are run and the way in which that is condoned by this federal government. They are devastated by the treatment that they receive and the lack of timely treatment.

That, of course, is highlighted in the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2008, which was released yesterday. It is a damning report, to say the least. It reports that the hospital funding split between the Commonwealth and the states and territories requires more attention. It talks about public hospital capacity having fallen by 67 per cent in the last 20 years. The AMA calculates that 3,750 beds are required to decrease occupancy levels to 85 per cent. Eighty-five per cent occupancy is important because it is considered the safe working level. The royal hospitals in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth and Sydney’s North Shore and Prince Alfred royal hospitals are closer to 90 per cent occupancy, and some are closer to 95 per cent occupancy. This position is something that is condoned day in, day out by this Rudd Labor government. It has to come to an end. The report says:

Despite minor recent improvement, less than two-thirds of emergency department patients classified as urgent are currently seen within the recommended 30 minutes.

The majority of these issues are, of course, state and territory issues, but this is a situation which has festered and deteriorated over the last 12 months under the watch of this Rudd Labor government.

The Labor Party, not just in health but in a number of areas, have embarked on a rewrite of history, a propaganda campaign talking down the economy that they inherited from the coalition government at the end of last year. They have tried to rewrite history in relation to the way in which we managed the economy as well as health. Let me put on the record a few statistics which I think demonstrate the proud record of the Howard government in relation to health. The total investment in health and ageing in 1995-96 under Labor was just under $20 billion, at $19.5 billion. In 2007-08 the coalition committed $51.8 billion to health funding, a real increase of 88 per cent. That is a remarkable statistic. Labor spent $6 billion under the MBS in 1995-96—bear that in mind. Under the coalition $12.5 billion was spent in 2007-08, an increase in real terms of 48 per cent. Do not listen to anything that the Labor government have got to say in relation to health. Their track record proves that they are as fraudulent on health as they are on the economy.

It is about time that the states and territories started to own up to their responsibilities and that this health minister stopped whimpering in a corner with the Prime Minister instead of calling to account what has been a disgraceful display by state and territory governments. The reality is that the coalition government in relation to Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme funding in 2007-08 spent $7.1 billion, a real increase of 110 per cent, compared to 2.4 per cent when Labor were last in power. We are not going to stand on this side of the parliament and tolerate some rewrite of history by the Labor government. We are not going to tolerate some sort of propaganda campaign which holds them up as having had a great period in office prior to 1996 and which says that it was the coalition government that failed in its responsibility in relation to health over the 11 years that we were in government.

The fact remains that we excelled and provided very good outcomes in the areas we had responsibility for during the period of 1996 to 2007—not to say that we had it perfect or that more could not be done. What we did was to embark on a way in which we could hold the state and territory governments to account, because they have run the public hospital system into the ground, and it will take years to rectify. If this health minister and the government are going to continue the form of the last 12 months—that is, to be completely uncritical of the state and territory governments—then this situation will only continue to deteriorate and will take even longer to rectify. The government should be condemned for their inaction to date, and they should be condemned for managing the hospital system in exactly the same way as Nathan Rees. When people think about federal Labor in health, they should think about state Labor in health. When people think about the Prime Minister and Nicola Roxon in health, they should think about Nathan Rees and Reba Meagher.

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

That’s getting a bit low!

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A state Labor management style has been imposed on us. The health minister indicates that that is a bit low; we need to see how low the health standards drop under this federal government before we can definitively say whether the health minister is accurate or not. We know that health has been disastrous under the Labor governments in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Northern Territory, the ACT and South Australia. Right around the country, Labor has run the health system into the ground, and this federal government is on the same path as well.

The first Reba Meagher-style announcement of this health minister was in relation to private health. Reba Roxon said that 500,000 people should be forced out of private health and into the public hospital system. The health minister claims that forcing 500,000 people out of private health and pushing them into the public health system, a system which Labor have already crippled, is somehow going to deliver better health outcomes for the Australian people. We cannot stand by—the Australian people cannot stand by—and tolerate a further deterioration of this health system, which is what will happen if the federal government continues down this track.

When you look at the figures you will see they are quite amazing. For the change that the government proposed to the Medicare levy surcharge, their first figures indicated that 485,000 people would drop their private health insurance. This withstood scrutiny for about 24 hours. The government finally realised and admitted to their mistake that 485,000 did not include children or dependants, and the figures shot up to 644,000. Don’t people with children and dependants get services in the public system in this country? Is that where Labor thinks we should be? It is such a ridiculous position to be in, and an embarrassing one for the Minister for Health and Ageing.

This ended up with the government’s compromise to 500,000 people—including, I might say to their credit, dependants and children—who will now be forced off private health and pushed into the public health system as a result of Labor style management of health. Public health deserves much greater support than it is getting from the government, and this coalition opposition will not stand by while we have some sort of rewrite of history. We will make sure that we continue to call this government to account. They should stand condemned for the way in which the Acting Prime Minister walked away from their election commitment today. As a coalition, we will make sure that we keep the pressure on the states and territories and this government to make sure that the public health system in this country turns around, because we are committed not just to a public health system but also to a private one. We are the only side of this parliament capable of delivering positive health outcomes. The figures from when we were in government demonstrate that, and we will show it when we are returned at the next election.

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

That was a disappointing display from the shadow minister, the member for Dickson. I was looking forward to 15 minutes from the shadow minister, who has not really said very much about health and who does not even care enough to stay and hear his own matter of public importance answered. The media is more important to him—’Oh, I am sorry, Minister, I have to do a doorstop on the matter that I am raising in the House.’ I actually think that is quite astounding. Has a shadow minister ever raised a matter of public importance in the House before and then left before it was debated? It just shows that the shadow minister is not interested in our public hospitals. He knows that this is one of the cheekiest matters of public importance to ever be raised in this House. After 12 years of being in government and doing nothing about public hospitals—after 12 years of neglect—he wants to pretend that we should be able to fix every single thing in the health system within 11 months. We agree that there are problems in our health system. We agree that a lot of them were caused by the previous government. Interestingly, I agree with the shadow minister on that, because the shadow minister is now on the record as saying that mistakes were made in dealing with public health in their 12 years in government. But he believes, despite having spent 12 years making all of those mistakes, that we should miraculously be able to fix them in 11 months.

We are very proud of what we have done in 11 months, and I am going to take the chamber through all of the extra investments that we have made. What I suspect in this matter of public importance is that it is just the same old, same old from the Liberals. They used to blame the states; now they want to blame the government. They are always blaming someone else. It is the same old story. In fact, it is ‘Dutton’ dressed up as lamb. I reckon that is what the shadow minister is doing—it is just the same old measures that he has always been arguing.

We saw that there were problems in the health system. We went to the election with specific commitments as to how we would fix the health system. We are very proud of what we have already done. We have put a billion extra dollars into our public hospitals already, and they needed it. We have met and been negotiating with the states and territories and we are very close to finalising our deals. Contrary to what the shadow minister always wants to say, we are not apologists for the states. Some of them have got things wrong, but what the shadow minister does not want to acknowledge is that the coalition did nothing in government to try to improve the standards of our public hospitals. They did nothing in the negotiations with the states to improve the arrangements. They used to say to the states, minutes to the sign-off line for the healthcare agreements, ‘Here is our deal, take it or leave it.’ That was their negotiations.

We actually believe we can deliver better outcomes if both levels of government work together. We hope we will be able to deliver that. We will not be handing over a single dollar to the states and territories without a guarantee about the improved performance that that will deliver. We have already been able to achieve that in elective surgery. We made a commitment that we would put $600 million into elective surgery and, at the halfway mark, we have already seen more than 14,000 surgeries undertaken. I wonder whether members on this side of the House know how many more elective surgeries that is in just the first six months of this program, compared to those funded by those opposite for a whole 12 years in government?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell us, tell us!

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

It is 14,000 more. There was not a single elective surgery procedure paid for by the previous government to try to deal with the waiting lists that they were so worried about. I want to take note—while the shadow minister has deigned to stay here for a little longer—of a report from the AMA yesterday that he wanted to quote so enthusiastically. They release a report card each year on the state of our public hospitals. They did that yesterday, and they rightly pointed out some serious problems that remain with our hospitals which make us so determined to fix them. What the shadow minister failed to say was that most of the fairly scathing assessments from the AMA actually were the same as the ones that were made last year. The reason they were the same as the ones made last year is that over nearly 12 years of Liberal government we have seen a decline in standards in our public hospitals. We cannot pretend that the previous government had nothing to do with it. Even the shadow minister, in his more sanguine moments, is prepared to admit—for example, in front of 300 or 400 GPs at a conference in Darwin last week—that mistakes were made by his government. But he comes into this House and wants to put on the macho man act, pretend that everything they did was fantastic and that they fixed the whole system. I do not know why he did not quote one of the significant changes in the issue of access and equity from the AMA report. In 2007, on the previous government’s watch, the AMA said

There has been a distinct deterioration in the proportion of Australians being admitted for elective surgery within medically recommended times.

We find in 2008, in an area where we have made immediate injections of funds, that the report from the AMA says that there has been some improvement in the proportion of Australians being admitted for elective surgery within medically recommended times. That is no small feat. We have not been in government for a long time. We have acted fast. We have started turning things around. But it is not quoted by the shadow minister. I wonder why that would be.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Selective.

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

They are very selective about the process that they are taking. I think this matter of public importance, arguing about ‘the failure of the government to deliver an effective public hospital system’, should really be a question: ‘Why can this government in 11 months not fix all of the problems that we caused in 12 years?’ That would be a more honest debate for the shadow minister to have, but he is not interested in doing that.

I think it is also disappointing that the shadow minister has not been prepared to look at our investment in GP services. Part of fixing our hospitals is investing more in our hospitals, but a big part of it is making sure we get services that can be delivered outside hospitals into our communities so that people do not need to go to hospital. This is a particular problem for the member opposite. A GP superclinic has been promised in his electorate. He has been unable to decide whether or not he supports a superclinic in his electorate.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’ll have another one!

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’ll have another one!

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

I thought there might be some people who were prepared to have one. He will not go on the record about it. He wants to criticise us for all of the most outrageous things. He wants to make outrageous comparisons between us and the state government, and then he expects that we are going to keep the gloves on in dealing with him. He is going to have to decide what he wants to do in his local electorate. I know the member for Cowan, who is here listening to this debate, has one that is going to be delivered in his electorate, and he has been an enthusiastic supporter—sensibly. It is not every day that the federal government wants to put millions of dollars into your electorate, and you would be pretty silly not to want it. We are going to make sure that it works properly. I am interested that the member for—Gwydir?

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Parkes.

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

Parkes is here, because I understand that he and a couple of his colleagues are very enthusiastic for us to have GP superclinics in their electorates. What I suggest is that you lobby your shadow minister either to get to a position where the Liberal Party will support this investment or to suggest that the money that we have promised to his electorate could be put into yours. If the shadow minister wants us to do that, we are more than happy to do it.

But the thing that has been really outrageous and, frankly, pretty disappointing about the shadow minister’s MPI is that in less than five minutes he had run out of anything to say about health. In less than five minutes he was already on to his theories about spin doctoring and his theories about other things. We have not heard anything yet from this shadow minister about what he would do to fix the health system. We have not heard anything from any of the Liberal Party about a single policy in health. They do not know whether they are going to support ours. They are not prepared to own up properly to the legacy that they have left us with. Again, we made an announcement last week of 175 new GPs across the country, and nine of them are likely to be in the training area that covers the shadow minister’s electorate. He is not even sure whether he welcomes that or not. He is not prepared to be honest about the fact that the member for Warringah and the member for Bradfield—the previous Leader of the Opposition—admitted that they made mistakes in capping the number of those places in GP training, but he is not even sure whether he welcomes those places.

It is very interesting to me that, in addition to the people on this side of the House who are very interested in hospitals, we have a number of members whom I have been engaging with directly—I even met with the member for Riverina earlier today—who do have serious problems in their hospitals. I do not deny that there is a lot of work that we have to do to fix this. There are problems in the local member’s community with GPs being trained overseas. We are working to fix those problems, but we cannot do it all at once. We have to take it step by step.

We are proud of putting $1 billion into our hospitals, putting $600 million into elective surgery, creating more GP training places, getting extra nurses trained and setting up a vast range of other supports for rural services in particular, but we are going to get further changes right and we are not ashamed about taking the time to get proper advice, to do it clearly, and we are not ashamed about negotiating with the states and territories to demand more from them if we invest more through the healthcare agreements. We have been absolutely upfront that we want transparency, that we want strong reporting and that we want improved health outcomes, and the commitment that we made at the election was that, if we cannot get the states and territories to sign on to those changes, we would go back to the public asking for their approval to take over financial control of the hospitals. The deadline we set for that is the middle of next year.

For some reason, the shadow minister is too busy to even hear the answers. He has gone off to do some media interview because that is more important than his own matter of public importance. He does not want to hear that we are working exactly as we promised and we are following those standards. I think it is disappointing. I think we have some serious issues in health that we have to confront. We have some big changes that we are going to have to be prepared to make. We have big investments that are going to be very difficult in these financial circumstances but are necessary for the community. But we have a shadow minister who is not even prepared to stay and listen to his colleagues who are going to debate the matter of public importance. He is not even prepared to stay and hear what else is going on.

Those opposite always want to use the worst examples from our state colleagues—and sadly, on occasion, they give us examples that those opposite can use—but I would like to take the chance to give some good examples. As a result of the elective surgery money that the Commonwealth provided to each state and territory, Victoria committed to undertaking 9,400 elective surgery operations this year. Victoria reported in their parliament today that already, two months ahead of time, because of that extra assistance that the Commonwealth has provided, 9,918 extra elective surgery operations have been performed. That Commonwealth money has meant that nearly 10,000—in fact, 500 more than were promised—elective surgery procedures have been undertaken. That means that in my electorate, in the electorate of the member for Maribyrnong and in the electorate of the member for Deakin—in all of the Victorian electorates—more people have had their hip surgery done, their knee surgery done or their cataract surgery done because we put the money on the table.

Why is it that the shadow minister does not want to use those examples? Why doesn’t he want to come in and say, ‘When the states are performing well, we should give them more to give them some reward payment’? Why doesn’t he want to engage in that sort of constructive debate? He just wants to complain about the states and use every bad example instead of, when we invest money and the states can deliver better services, being prepared to come in here and stand up and say that they are doing well. He is too busy out there doing his media, and he is the one who had the gall to suggest that our government is being run like The Hollowmen.

This is someone who thinks this matter is so important that the parliament should allocate an hour to debate it but he is only prepared to stay to hear himself talk. I thought the Leader of the Opposition had a good opinion of himself, but that attitude obviously flows through to all of his shadow ministers. The shadow minister only wants to listen to himself speak, not to get any real answers from anybody else. And I am getting a little bit sick of some of the pious displays from the shadow minister. He welcomed the initiatives and the comments I made today about the insulin pumps and Diabetes Day, which are very important—I notice there are still members from Diabetes Australia here—and that is good because it is something that very many members, particularly backbenchers, have been actively engaged in for a long time. But you cannot do that and pretend to work together and then stand up and put on this appalling display and not be prepared to listen to what it is we are doing.

I challenge the shadow minister: if he thinks that the Commonwealth has not done enough, does he want us to take back the billion dollars that we have already given to public hospitals? Does the shadow minister want us to take back the money we have paid for all of those extra surgeries? Does he want us to stop funding an extra 170 GPs in the next two years? Does he want us to not go ahead with the more than 1,000 nursing places that are going to start as of next year—90 already this year, 1,094 next year? We already know he does not want us to proceed with our binge drinking strategy, so I am not even going to ask that hypothetically because he has been disinterested in these changes. I am presuming he does not want to stop us screening people for bowel cancer, a big investment that we made in the budget. Why do none of these major investments in health get a mention from the shadow minister? It is just the same old same old Dutton dressed up as lamb! (Time expired)

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have no problem today standing up and debating this matter of public importance, because I can tell you that in my part of Australia the issue of health supersedes any other. It is the issue that my office deals with on a daily basis. I acknowledge that the health minister is aware of what is happening in my electorate, and I acknowledge that I have had some meetings with her. But make no mistake about it, this debate today is about trust—the trust created last year when the Prime Minister, then the Leader of the Opposition, said, ‘When it comes to health, the buck stops with me.’ All across Australia people voted for the Labor government because the then opposition leader promised that he was going to fix health. Thankfully not too many people in my electorate followed that line, but right across Australia many people did. The situation since that time has deteriorated rapidly.

In my electorate, the Dubbo Base Hospital is $16 million in debt. The Greater Western Area Health Service is in a state of terminal collapse. Base hospitals at Orange and Bathurst and countless small bush hospitals are in dire straits. My colleague, the Leader of the Nationals, the member for Wide Bay, in question time today mentioned the fact that the staff of Dubbo Base Hospital are purchasing supplies from the vet and the local chemist shop. Indeed, a surgeon at Dubbo hospital, when needing a particular piece of equipment to undertake an operation and finding out that credit had been cut off from the supplier, cleared Greater Western Area Health Service’s bill with his own credit card so that he could purchase the equipment needed to undertake that particular operation. In the hospitals in the towns of Gilgandra and Coonabarabran patients are no longer fed meat because the butcher has not been paid. In this day and age, this is a terrible state of affairs.

I would like acknowledge that tomorrow is national Diabetes Day and that we still have members from Diabetes Australia up here. I am looking forward to the function at the hotel tonight to recognise this special day. But, in contrast, this week air services are being pulled out of four towns in my electorate. One of those towns is Walgett. On Tuesday I had Ms Christine Corby, who is the CEO of the Walgett medical service, in my office quite distressed. I hear you ask: what does the withdrawal of airline services have to do with health? It is quite simple: these remote towns are serviced by fly-in practitioners—specialists, heart specialists, dentists, oncologists and specialists who deal with diabetes. The other thing that happened this week was that the diabetes map for Australia was released. Guess whose electorate has a high level of diabetes. And guess which town in my electorate is the worst. It is Walgett, which has a large Aboriginal population.

When we were in this House early in the term of this government debating the merits of sitting on Fridays, the Prime Minister went to my electorate. I might say this was without my knowledge, but I guess I will come to terms with that. He visited the Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service and he spoke with these people; he recognised and understood, quite rightly, the great work they are doing. The withdrawal of the en route subsidy, which means that $6 million has been taken out of these routes, has made these services unviable, so policies of this government are affecting the health of people in western New South Wales.

There has been talk about solutions. The minister mentioned the GP superclinics. There was quite a bit of mirth on the other side as people acknowledged the fact that they had this wonderful largess come their way in the form of a GP superclinic. A town in my electorate, Gunnedah, has the ultimate GP superclinic. If a GP superclinic is a stock standard Commodore, the people of Gunnedah have come up with a Statesman DeVille—the top of the range. Not only does it fit the complete criteria of the GP superclinic model to a T, it has an added bonus—that is, the training side of it. It is a partnership between the doctors, the local community, the state government and universities. As well, local industry is putting in personal private money to fund this clinic. Unfortunately, there are no funds left. The bucket for GP superclinics is empty. And in some cases they have gone to marginal seats where they do not really want them. The local GPs are saying, ‘We’re going to be overrun with doctors; we don’t really want the clinic.’ That is why there has been a slow take-up.

The people of Gunnedah, a town of 12,000, are serviced by three doctors. Can you imagine waiting for six weeks to see your GP? How does a young woman going through a pregnancy have a relationship with her doctor when there are three doctors to service 12,000 people? Indeed, in the true tradition of people in country areas, they are trying to get this job going on their own. A group of young mums in Gunnedah are fundraising for facilities for the local maternity room because the funding is so short. So in this day and age a progressive and growing town like Gunnedah, a town with 12,000 people and a large agriculture and mining base, is now having to fundraise for equipment for the local maternity wing. They have a solution by way of the Gunnedah medical centre which, anywhere it has been shown, has got rave reviews, but unfortunately the bucket of money is gone and people are squabbling over their GP superclinics because the local doctors are saying that there is going to be overcrowding of doctors.

The other case in point is in the town of Dubbo, Lourdes Hospital. Lourdes Hospital is in a state of disrepair. It is owned and run by Catholic Healthcare under an arrangement with the New South Wales government. Catholic Healthcare were prepared to put up a large amount of money, demolish the Lourdes Hospital and reconstruct a new hospital. They required a co-contribution from the New South Wales government. I cannot understand why any government, especially a cash-strapped one like New South Wales, would look a gift horse in the mouth and not take up that offer, but it appears that Lourdes Hospital has become a victim of the mini-budget last week.

Lourdes Hospital is a rehabilitation hospital. It does not just service the 40,000-odd people in Dubbo; it services an area with 200,000 people. People have to travel for five or eight hours for medical services. I know some people in this place have trouble coming to terms with the fact that they have to travel those long distances. My family were quite fortunate. My son, who is now 19, was one of the last children born in the Warialda Hospital. Now the young mums have to cross their legs for 200 kilometres and their partners have to break all traffic rules to get them to Tamworth on time. The ability to have children in rural Australia has been taken away. Even the base hospitals are now struggling.

There have been many speeches saying that there was nothing from the previous government. I can tell you why the people supported me in the last election with regard to health. It was because of the promise to return the management of health back to the local areas. We have these huge area health services. In Baradine, which is a town that has 500 people, they have built their own doctor’s surgery and they have just purchased, with their own money, a house for him to live in. But they are at the beck and call of a bureaucrat who lives in Bathurst, 600 or 700 kilometres away.

What New South Wales have done with the health service is depoliticise it. I do not mean that they have party-politicised it. I mean that the local chairman of the health board and the local mayor cannot go down and knock on the health minister’s door and say, ‘We need a physiotherapist,’ ‘We need a speech pathologist,’ or, ‘We need an oncologist that is going to come once a month.’ They cannot do that because the person who is in charge of these hospitals now is a bureaucrat. They are part of a chain. Their voice has been taken away.

I have been having meetings in my office in Dubbo with nurses and doctors from the Dubbo Base Hospital. They come in almost under the cover of darkness, terrified that someone in the health service will know they have been talking to me, their federal member. The health minister has seen the faxes. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find it completely hypocritical that the coalition would put this discussion of the public hospital system on the agenda. From what we heard earlier from the shadow minister, it appears that even from the bowels of opposition we are still hearing the blame game. They still have not worked out that the people did not want the blame game. In response to hearing that the Australian people cannot stand by and tolerate a declining health system, I have something for them: the people did not stand by and tolerate a declining health system—that is why we are on this side and they are on the other side. This all happened last year. So to come in here and carry on after 12 months that the system is not on track is absolute cobblewash.

Opposition Member:

Cobblewash!

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you look for a word that can describe what has happened here today and there is not one. After 11 years of neglect, today they have the audacity to come in and pull this on.

Figures show $1 billion was slashed in 2003 from public hospitals. There was $1 billion taken out of public hospitals, and it will take a lot of time to turn that around. We saw a decade of neglect, but the government is stepping up to the mark and is determined to deliver dramatic improvements in health care. The State of our public hospitals, June 2008 report is based on figures from when the Howard government was in power. I will read some of those figures out. In 2006-07, public hospital admissions increased by around three per cent. That is more than twice the rate of the population growth. When did this happen? It was in 2006-07. Who was in government then? It was the Howard government. Again in 2006-07, there were 6.7 million presentations to emergency departments, the equivalent of a third of Australia’s population. When did this happen? It was when the Howard government was in power, yet all we heard was the blame game. All we heard from the other side every time a question was raised by us when we were in opposition was, ‘Blame the states.’ The number of patients presenting to emergency departments between 1998-99 and 2006-07 increased by over 34 per cent. Three in 10 emergency department patients were not seen within the recommended time. This all happened under your watch; this all happened while the Howard government was in power.

All states and territories, with the exception of New South Wales, had a lower percentage of people presenting at emergency departments seen in the recommended time than in 1998-99. Indigenous Australians represent five per cent of public hospital admissions, but only 2.5 per cent of the Australian population. On average, the longest waits for elective surgery procedures are for knee replacement—162 days median—and hip replacement—median 106 days. This is why we are determined as a Labor government to improve our hospitals. All these facts and figures refer to when the opposition was in government.

Much work lies ahead of us. We know it is not an easy task, as the Minister for Health and Ageing said, to deliver a better health and hospital system. Much of this work has already commenced. Already, after just 11 months in government, we have a proud record. We will invest an extra $1 billion in public hospitals in the next year—the largest single-year increase in almost a decade. That is $1 billion extra into the health system; $1 billion more than the previous government had in there.

We established the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to drive large-scale reform. Reform is something that we did not hear at all about over the last 12 years. We have invested $275 million in 31 GP superclinics to help keep people well and out of hospital. We have begun a wide-ranging review of primary care and the Medicare schedule to create a greater focus on prevention in our health system. We are also committed to establishing a $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund, the largest investment in medical infrastructure in Australia’s history. That is an extra $10 billion that was not there when you lot were in government. We have increased the overall budget for health and ageing to $50 billion for the first time ever. These are real reforms.

We have also announced a plan to bring almost 10,000 nurses into the health and aged care systems. That is 10,000 nurses on the floors in hospitals to ensure that they deliver services for people. We have also begun work with the states and territories on a new Australian Health Care Agreement to end the blame game and improve our hospitals. As I said earlier, all we saw was 11 years of blaming the states for everything that went wrong instead of sitting down and negotiating with them and talking with them. All we had was blaming the states.

There is much in our health system to fix after 11 years of neglect, and it does not end at hospitals. We are determined to look at health in all areas. We are committed to introducing the Commonwealth Dental Health Program. Instead of supporting the government in its reform agenda, the opposition are actually jeopardising it. Their not supporting the Commonwealth Dental Health Program in the Senate is causing pain and suffering for thousands of pensioners and other low-income people in Australia. There is an enormous need in my electorate of Hindmarsh, which has many elderly people, for the Commonwealth Dental Health Program; they want and need a Commonwealth Dental Health Program. It is a big need not only in my electorate but in many electorates.

In South Australia the average waiting time for dental care restorative services is estimated at 18 months, for dentures 39 months and for specialist dental care 33 months. All these waiting times increased under the Howard government’s watch. Every time dental care was raised in this place the government at the time would wipe their hands and say, ‘It is a state issue—nothing to do with us.’ In South Australia the waiting time is a little shorter, down from 49 months in 2001—thank God for the Rann Labor government being elected back in 2002. They managed to reduce the waiting list. After Howard was elected in 1996, one of his very first acts was to abolish the Commonwealth Dental Health Program. The Rudd Labor government was elected on a platform that included the re-introduction of the Commonwealth Dental Health Program.

However, dental care for pensioners and low-income families risks being stalled by the opposition in the Senate as they continue to not support the government’s program. There are currently about 30,000 people in my state on waiting lists who would receive immediate relief if the opposition were to support that program. We have heard before in this place the horror stories of people suffering with bad dental decay. The opposition can currently give these pensioners immediate relief if they choose to support our very important dental scheme in the Senate. They would be able to assist pensioners immediately by not opposing this program. By opposing this program they are only doing harm to these people and making them wait longer.

The opposition’s record is quite bad. The Liberals cut funding by $1 billion in an already stretched system. They practised the systematic neglect of our hospital system for 12 long years. They played the blame game for 12 long years. Despite their belated recognition that they have made mistakes, the matter of public importance debate today is a clear sign that they have not changed at all since the heady days of government. In fact, I propose that the wording of this matter of public importance today be changed to, ‘The failure of the opposition whilst in government from 1996 to 2007 to deliver an effective public hospital system.’ That is what it should be.

As I said, when they sat on these benches on this side they consistently refused to take any responsibility for the problems in our health system. Now it seems that they have the same approach—willing to blame everybody else but themselves for 12 years. Almost everybody knows that the blame game was the clear cause of many of the problems in our health system.

We know they cut $1 million, we know they neglected reform and we know they failed to invest in prevention, knowing full well that those sick people would end up in state hospitals, and then they could just blame the states. Those failures are why the statistics you have heard in the last 48 hours happened on their watch. That is why the AMA talked about 1,500 people dying from overcrowding. But it is important to remember that these figures are figures from 2003. Who was in government in 2003? The Howard government! (Time expired)

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the seconds left, I will just say this: with this bad policy the government will move 500,000 people from the private system into the state hospital system. The Rudd government takes the savings in one hand and with the other hand transfers the problem to the states in increased numbers in those queues. There is no double happiness in this. This is a double unhappiness for the people of Australia. That is the great deceit that is involved in this matter. The government needs to change its mind with regard to its lack of support for and undermining of the private health system, and do the right thing for this country and agree to the choice of two systems of health.

Debate interrupted.