Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How is the Gillard government delivering better quality, more accessible health services to the community through more doctors, more nurses and a better health system? How have these reforms been received and what is the government’s response?

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

I thank the member for his question, particularly because I know he is interested in how services in his region can be improved. You do not have to look too far back—three years ago—to see that when we were elected we inherited, courtesy of the work of the Leader of the Opposition, a health system that was under extreme pressure. A billion dollars had been ripped out of our public health system, GP training places had been capped and nursing shortages were not being properly addressed. But we took action immediately to start to turn these things around.

We have made it easier to see a GP when you need one. We have removed the cap on GP training places. Already 175 extra GPs are being trained in our communities across the country, but that number is growing by 5,500 in the next decade. We have expanded the rural incentive programs for GPs. We have increased nurse university places by 1,000 a year and we have given nurse practitioners and midwives the right to Medicare. Nearly one million services have been provided under the teen dental program. Three years into our five-year GP superclinic program, 15 clinics have provided over a quarter of a million services. All of these things have been done in face of an opposition who have opposed each and every step along the way.

But we are only part way through the delivery of these important services. There are 37 emergency department projects underway across the country. There are new elective surgery theatres being built in, and new equipment going into, more than 125 hospitals across the country. Very shortly I will be making the first announcement for the small primary care infrastructure grants that have been requested by hundreds of GP practices across the country. And of course we have committed now, in the budget, to the establishment of after-hours GP services—all of this as we get on with the job the Leader of the Opposition has opposed.

I think the Leader of the Opposition might have been particularly interested to see the Menzies-Nous health survey report released today, which shows that 76 per cent of Australians support our health reforms and only nine per cent oppose them. Of course, that nine per cent includes the Leader of the Opposition and those sitting on the opposition benches—a new low, I think, for the Leader of the Opposition to be with just nine per cent of the community.

We are proud of what we are delivering in the health system. We are only able to deliver it because of the good work that has been done by the government to make sure we have a strong economy. We have saved thousands of jobs and we are supporting many more of them within the health system. We are delivering in health and we are delivering in education. We want to use the Broadband Network to deliver even better health services into the future.

It is not that often that I agree with the member for Moncrieff but I think he is right to say that it is not worthy of a leader of a major party with the history of the Liberal Party simply to want to oppose, to want to wreck, to want to end, to want to stop, every initiative that this government takes. Only nine per cent of the population are opposed to our health reforms, and the Leader of the Opposition stands condemned for being amongst them.