Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I would like to talk to the Commonwealth Grants Commission Report on GST revenue sharing relativities: 2010 review. I welcome the report because it recognises that, over many years, New South Wales and Victoria have shared the cost of equalisation, while other states and the Northern Territory were below the average. I particularly welcome New South Wales’s share of revenue being increased from 30.2 per cent to 30.7 per cent. In this context, I think it is important that GST revenue be used efficiently and productively.

In dealing with revenue efficiently and productively, nothing could be more important than the government’s Better Health, Better Hospitals policy, which is vitally important to economic growth and building a better society. This is part of the government’s ongoing decisive action to make sure that we have better hospitals and better health policy—something that the opposition failed to deal with in 11½ years of government. This government has taken decisive action to underpin 210,000 jobs in the face of the global financial crisis. We have done that through the fiscal stimulus. And we also want to take decisive action to build a better hospital system. We want to build a new, national health and hospital network—better health and better hospitals—something that the coalition government in their period under John Howard and Peter Costello never had either the intellectual capacity or the energy to deal with. That is the reality in terms of where we are.

We want a system that is funded nationally and run locally. It is about delivering on the basics for the Australian public. It is about empowering local doctors and nurses to make important decisions, on behalf of the local communities, on the health and welfare of their patients, and about important decisions to make sure that the funding that comes into hospitals is spent effectively and efficiently and not just handed out the way it was handed out for 11½ years, without any rhyme or reason and without having a proper national direction to the health system.

This national funding will make more money available to meet rising health costs. Everyone recognises that health costs will rise, and that is why we need to act decisively to deal with these rising health costs. We want to set tough new national standards on elective surgery and on emergency departments. We will pick up 60 per cent of the capital costs—something that has never been done in the health system by any federal government. We will deal with teaching and research to make sure that we are getting the proper education into the hospital system and that research is done effectively. We will look at out-of-hospital services to make sure that we do not unnecessarily overburden the hospital system, and we will pick up general practitioner funding. This will all mean more beds in hospitals. It will mean better regional and country hospitals—something, again, that the coalition, including the National Party, for all of their whingeing, all of their moaning, all of their carping, failed to deliver during 11½ years of coalition government. We will deal with preventative healthcare strategies. This is a package about ensuring that we take our hospital system forward. We have managed the global financial crisis. We are now about managing the hospital system of this country in the interests of the nation.

It is quite interesting that the Leader of the Opposition rejected this approach even before we had made an announcement. Mr Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, the negative Leader of the Opposition, the carping Leader of the Opposition, the mean-spirited Leader of the Opposition, following in the mean-spirited steps of his former leader, John Howard—what is this man about? He is about a con job on climate change and a con job on paid maternity leave. (Time expired)