Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely, Senator Brandis. I would like in the time available to me to focus on two aspects. The first is the local hospital networks. What a deception that has been. It is very, very clear from this agreement and it also clearly emerged from the inquiry that we had last week that all this talk about federal funding run locally is waffle and drivel. That is all it is—drivel. It is unadulterated drivel. The states and the Commonwealth signed up to this clause. It says that the local hospital networks will be appointed by the states. The states are in control. There is nothing federal about this. In the governing council which is supposed to run these local hospital networks the clinical expertise—that is, the doctors in these local hospital networks—will be ‘external to the local hospital network wherever practical’. What does that mean? That means that all the doctors who had been assured that they were going to be involved in running them locally are not going to be running the local hospital networks. Again, this is just spin.

I say to all the health professionals who made submissions and who keep telling us in briefings, ‘We are going to be involved’: that is not what is written in the agreement; that is not what the documents actually say. After many years of involvement in law, the written agreement that has been signed off is what I follow, not whatever comes out of the mouth of the Prime Minister, full of spin and lack of substance.

The other point that we want to make here is about the policy process that was undertaken. The whole thing about this reform is that it really does look—like the mining tax and like a whole lot of other things that this government has done—cobbled together. It is very clear that this was driven out of the Prime Minister’s office. In fact, it is very clear from the evidence that was given by Mr Rimmer and other officials from Prime Minister and Cabinet at estimates that this whole health agenda has been driven out of the Prime Minister’s office and approved by the kitchen cabinet.

It is not surprising that Minister Roxon today feels aggrieved and a bit touchy about the fact that she needed to read the newspaper to know that the centrepiece of this agreement had suddenly been dumped. She said in a press conference, ‘Go and ask Prime Minister and Cabinet, because I know nothing about the timing of this decision.’