Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I did not have a chance this morning to check the Australian, because I know that in the last few days you had to look at what was in the Australian to see what the questions were going to be. I have not seen it yet today; there could well have been a paper issue on health, because that was the focus today.

I am really pleased that Senator Cormann is such an astute reader of the Prime Minister’s website. This came out during the Senate estimates process, where he was able to quote chapter and verse from the Prime Minister’s website. We appreciate that, Senator Cormann. It is really useful to know that those websites are being well read and that the linguistics of the process are being looked at. Maybe what we should be looking at is what the government said they were going to do, which is that they were going to work with the states. They said that no longer were we going to use the old blame game process that we saw year after year in this place. When there were any questions about the health system, the previous government had a really quick answer: it was the state’s fault; it was always somebody else’s fault. When we came into government we saw there was a problem.

First of all, we acknowledged there was a problem. We actually said we would put in place processes that would look towards fixing the public health system. We used those terms, because we saw there was a real problem. Immediately, the government decided that they needed to have the whole process engaged. So we developed the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. We gave that group a mandate to independently look at what was going on in the process, to provide feedback to the government and to talk to people across all states—professionals, people in consumer groups, people in state government and everybody who had an interest in our health system. This commission was carefully appointed with people who represented those areas to feed back to the government and look professionally at what we could do with the health system, because we acknowledged that the public health system needed some help. That process came out and there were discussion papers and interim reports. It has gone back out now to the community, and we are waiting for the next round of that to come through so that, then, that can work with the COAG process—once again, engaging with all the states—to see what we have to do. This is after the government has already made the public announcement of the $64 billion package over a period of five years to look specifically at the health system and $600 million to look at reducing elective surgery waiting times—and, most particularly, effectively looking at training packages to ensure that we have appropriate, trained professionals at every level of our health system to provide that service.

I note the questions that were given by senators, such as Senator Nash, about particular issues in rural Australia. Her questions, quite rightly, were looking at rural New South Wales. Nobody is running away from those questions. I note Senator Cormann’s issues about running away. No-one is running away from that. But I well remember—when similar questions were asked by Labor senators on that side of the chamber—being lectured to by various members of the then government about how long it took to train professionals. I well remember the special day we were told that it took a long time to train a doctor. Well, we have actually responded to that. In terms of what happened with our government, we are working with the professional groups so that we can put specific methods in place to engage with professionals to ensure that we can respond to the need, because the issues Senator Nash raised were particularly about having trained professionals working in regional Australia. We also looked at the particular needs of a regional and rural health program. And that is on our record. In terms of the process, certainly there needs to be engagement at all levels. No-one is running away from that. But we also need to have a little bit more understanding. Rather than standing up in this place and saying ‘the government has failed’ because on a certain date it has not fixed everything in the health system, we need to go forward.