Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

I would particularly like to address my remarks to the answers, or perhaps the non-answers, given by Senator Ludwig to questions related to the Queensland health system and the Queensland hospital system. I suppose in one way we should be pleased that at least Senator Ludwig did not attempt to justify the scandalous mess that passes for a hospital system in Queensland at the present time. We had a comment yesterday from the Australian Medical Association Queensland president that the Queensland health system is a bureaucracy that has become very bloated, very rigid and very politicised—in fact, next to useless and harmful to the citizens of Queensland. But I was interested to note that Minister Ludwig tried to tell us that this was all going to be fixed by COAG, that there was no need to wait for the buck to stop with Prime Minister Rudd, because COAG would talk their way out of this problem.

The unfortunate position, though, is that the Business Council of Australia has come out today with a comment saying:

We need a new independent health body that can break the current impasse and seamlessly provide for patient needs, boost efficiency and drive the reforms required to meet the needs of the future.

They are, of course, talking about our health services and they point out they do not function effectively as one system. That is a quote:

… they do not function effectively as one system.

‘Australia’s health care is not fit for the job,’ Ms Katie Lahey, director of the Business Council of Australia, told us today. So much for Minister Ludwig’s suggestion that it is COAG that can fix the woes of Queensland.

The Business Council paper goes on to say:

… a key reason for the lack of reform progress is the fragmentation and blurring of accountabilities for financing and service provision across the levels of governments and between policy portfolios within governments.

This is a further quote from the report:

There is a lack of capacity for any one area to exercise leadership and no national integrated database on which to base planning decisions, or monitor the performance and effectiveness of the system.

Of course, Queenslanders did not need the Business Council of Australia to tell them how inefficient and how leaderless this system was. They only had to look as far as the waiting lists at every regional hospital in Queensland to understand the problem.

Then there is the wonderful funding question that Minister Ludwig did not quite manage to answer either. Of the $250 million in ‘new funding’ for health building that Premier Bligh announced recently during her election campaign, we now discover that $242 million is in fact federal money. It comes out of Rudd government campaign promises. There is an amusing comment—well, it would be amusing if it were not so serious—from Premier Bligh, who points out that they will be contributing $8 million towards the $250 million policy that she announced. This $8 million contribution, according to Ms Bligh, is ‘significant’. She said that she ‘deserved credit for securing federal cash with her forceful negotiations’.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald. When we talk about forceful negotiations with Ms Bligh, I think the place she needs to start looking for forceful negotiations is within her own party. We at least agreed with her wholeheartedly when she countermanded and pushed to the side her hopeless and useless state health minister, Stephen Robertson. We agreed that he certainly was ‘denecessary’.

If you look at the stories in today’s paper about Ms Bligh’s attempt to suggest that she is in charge in Queensland, you find the minister and member for Cairns, Desley Boyle, telling the Premier, ‘Not so fast.’ I think it is Ms Bligh who may find herself ‘denecessary’. Certainly the people of Queensland feel that way about their health system.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers. It is no surprise that we are heading for a state election in Queensland this Saturday. Those on the other side have been raising the subject since last week. But I really find the comments made by Senator Boyce describing the health industry as ‘harmful and useless’ disparaging. As the husband of someone in this industry, I find it despicable that that sort of description is given to people who are committed and care for people in the health industry. The LNP, using those descriptions, has no compassion for people in that industry.

The statistics are particularly pertinent to understanding where jobs and where the health industry are heading in the state of Queensland. The LNP leader, Mr Springborg, on 2 March announced budget projections of about $3 billion for his election promises. To compensate there would be $3 billion funding over three years to pay for those election commitments. But here is the sting in the tail: where is that funding going to come from? Naturally, it will have to come out of those public service jobs. In particular, I am advised that just short of $760 million is going to be cut from health. This is the objective of Mr Springborg, or ‘Cyborg’—whatever they call him these days. He is about cutting jobs.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Furner, you must refer to a person by their proper name or title.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that point, Mr Deputy President. Thank you for that. This is the objective behind this opposition that want to be in government in Queensland. Their objective is to cut jobs in Queensland—in their terms, and Senator Boyce reflected on them—making them ‘denecessary’. Try to find that definition in the dictionary, please, Senator Boyce. You will not find it; there is no such terminology. This is the type of LNP leader they expect to be elected in Queensland. All it is is the old Queensland Liberal Party and National Party recycled. It is the recycling of the old brand. It is nothing new.

Talking about jobs, I will take you back in time to 1997. The views of the industrial relations and training minister at the time—I think it was Santo Santoro, from memory—on jobs mirrored the Peter Reith legislation, the Workplace Relations Act 1996. He was that lazy in the way that he handled that legislation that the only thing he did was change the title to make it the Queensland Workplace Relations Act 1997. He made the right of entry notice 48 hours. Isn’t that a surprise—the Queensland coalition government, similar to the members on the crossbench, wanting to change right of entry notice to 48 hours! The only other thing they did in that legislation, other than mirroring it, was to apply Queensland workplace agreements. It is quite an easy task to pick up a piece of legislation from the federal arena and put your logo on it and rebadge it.

As Queensland has a population growing by approximately 1,800 per week, with people coming across the border, we need services in Queensland. We cannot afford to have jobs made ‘denecessary’. We need to support our public service. It is the greatest employer in the state. If we do away with jobs in that arena, what is going to happen to the private sector? Naturally there will be a downturn in resources and jobs growth. Queensland Labor is focusing on jobs. It is about growing jobs in Queensland and keeping Queensland strong. On the other hand, the LNP is about making them ‘denecessary’ or ‘front-ending’ them—the other terminology they have come up with. For the life of me I do not know what those two things are, and I am sure they do not either.

This is where we are heading with this upcoming state election. That is the agenda of the opposition. They have no credentials; they have no ability to be elected. All they are going to do to fund their $3 billion election promises is to make ‘denecessary’ jobs in the public service. That is why on Saturday, as Queenslanders, we need to make sure we keep Queensland strong with a Labor government. (Time expired)

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to take note of Senator Ludwig’s answer to Senator Boyce’s question. Before Senator Furner leaves the chamber can I say that nobody would criticise Senator Furner for coming to the defence of his partner, who is, apparently, an employee of Queensland Health. Without in any way casting any disrespect on Senator Furner’s motives, it did rather seem to me to be emblematic of the Labor Party attitude to health policy in Queensland—that it is all about looking after the interests of the staff and it is never about looking after the interests of the patient. That is why, when Dr Christopher Davis, the president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, launched yesterday the Queensland AMA’s report card on the state public hospital system, which bears the rather discouraging title Poor state of health, he was moved to describe the Queensland health system as:

… a bureaucracy that’s come very bloated, very rigid and very politicised

As somebody who lives in Queensland, I can assure you, Mr Deputy President, that that is, if anything, a generous description of the Queensland public health system.

I know the Australian Labor Party are very good at blaming other people for what happens on their watch. We have yet to hear the Rudd government put up its hand and say, ‘We, the Australian government, are responsible for the loss of Australian jobs.’ They would rather blame it on phenomena occurring overseas. But I think it is very, very difficult for the Labor government in Queensland, which has been in power for 11 years—and Labor has been in power in Queensland for all but 2½ of the last 20 years—to blame anyone other than themselves for the state of the Queensland health system. The report of the AMA identified these shortcomings with the Queensland health system:

• Severe shortages of acute, emergency and overnight public hospital beds
• Staffing, in particular difficulties in attracting and retaining staff to rural and regional areas
• Lack of support for staff is contributing to low rates of staff morale and excessive workloads
• High bed occupancy rates, placing patients at risk and contributing to … waiting lists

And the criticisms go on and on.

One thing Mr Beattie, the former Premier of Queensland, that master of political deception, was very eager to commit to was the reduction of hospital waiting lists in Queensland. And what has happened on the Labor Party’s watch? They have grown. They have grown exponentially to—what was it, Senator Boyce?

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thirty-one thousand.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thirty-one thousand people on the waiting list. This is an $8.9 billion health system servicing a population of 4.2 million people, and yet the waiting lists have blown out under the stewardship of the state Labor government. And the mindset of Labor in Queensland when it comes to health policy, just as in so many other areas of service delivery, is that their first and last priority is to look after the bureaucrats who run the system. Their very lowest priority is to look after the interests of the patients.

It is very like that episode many years ago of the famous television comedy show Yes, Minister. I am sure you will remember it, Mr Deputy President. The minister for health had discovered the perfect hospital in the system—no patients! There were plenty of bureaucrats, plenty of paramedics, a few doctors here and there, but no patients to trouble the bureaucrats. That is the Bligh vision: a system in which patients are so low a priority that they might as well not even be there. Everybody in Brisbane, in regional Queensland and throughout my state is perfectly well aware that the state hospital system is a shambles, that the standards of the state hospitals are appalling. Forty per cent of state hospitals have inadequate accreditation measures. This is the responsibility of the Australian Labor Party, the party that has been running the system for 11 long years. (Time expired)

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an interesting time we have here in this chamber; we obviously have an election looming in Queensland.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I can see those Queensland senators sitting opposite. I rise today to take note of answers provided by the ministers. I would like to touch on the issue of hospitals, which Senator Brandis has just raised, and also the answers provided by Senator Conroy.

On the issue of Queensland hospitals, I did a little bit of research. I understand from comments made by Premier Bligh that Queensland’s elective surgery waiting lists are now the shortest in the country and that she will continue to do more. An extra $90 million is being invested into the Surgery Connect program during the next three years, with the first of up to 20,000 extra operations starting in June. Premier Bligh says that at least $15 million of the funding will be dedicated to providing surgery to children on the waiting list and that this investment will deliver up to 1,100 additional procedures for children every year. That means children who need operations, such as having their tonsils removed, will get their treatment more quickly.

The Premier says the government’s $10 billion health action plan delivered record numbers of doctors, nurses and allied health workers to Queensland public hospitals. There has been an increase of 6,267 nurses—from 21,911 to 27,689—and allied health workers have gone up from 6,934 to 9,068. I also understand that the Premier last month announced a new children’s emergency department on Brisbane’s north side to support the $1.1 billion Queensland Children’s Hospital that is being built in Brisbane’s south. The Premier launched a major new $250 million health building program and also a plan to train a team of 30 nurse practitioners to work in what she says are the state’s busiest emergency departments. So the Premier says that she has listened to senior doctors and nurses in public hospitals about how they can address the issues. I understand the package of measures included in the emergency department upgrade totals of $144.5 million in Brisbane, Logan, Redlands, Ipswich, Caboolture, Bundaberg and Toowoomba. New designated areas for children and their parents to wait for treatment away from adults under the influence are also to be added to the emergency department projects. If people are interested in looking at what the Queensland Labor government intends to do, they can get onto the Labor Party’s website and will find the relevant information there.

I would now like to move to the response provided by Senator Conroy with regard to broadband. We have this issue raised time and time again in this chamber—the issue of broadband to rural and regional Australia. Here we sit, again and again, having this topic raised. We know that the opposition left a legacy of 18 failed broadband plan attempts in their 11 years. They did not deliver to regional Australia; they did not deliver to rural Australia. Before the last federal election, the opposition were prepared to deliver high-speed broadband only to those people living in the five capital cities. And, what is more, they provided no safety net for Australia. As a result of the opposition’s inaction, their failed plans, Australia’s broadband performance is behind that of countries we consider our international peers. We know that Telstra admitted in July last year that two-thirds of the metropolitan areas and more than 50 per cent of people in regional areas could not get 12 megabits per second. (Time expired)

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a marvellous rendition concerning Queensland Health from Senator Dana Wortley of South Australia!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What? Where are the Queenslanders?

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The senator is from South Australia! It is good to see that the Labor Party believe Queensland Health is in such strong form that they send in a senator from South Australia to go into bat for them. And I tell you what: a senator from South Australia would probably have a better chance than the current health minister of fixing up the problems in Queensland Health. I was expecting Senator McLucas or Senator Moore or Senator Ludwig or Senator Hogg, but the Labor Party’s belief in Queensland Health is so strong and so vital that they send in Senator Dana Wortley—and a lovely person she is—when we were expecting a little bit more firepower, probably from a Queensland senator.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

None of the Queenslanders want to be associated with it.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I take the interjection. It does seem that there is a sense of the Labor Party ducking for cover on health—and well may they duck for cover with 31,000 people on the waiting list. The greatest litmus test of how a government is working is its capacity to provide basic services. We can see in Queensland that it is all lost; there is no capacity to provide basic services.

Today I heard Senator Ludwig talking about the best national partnership for health and referring, I suppose, to the federal government picking up the tab for Queensland Health because they are so completely incompetent—but I do not know whether one lot of competence is going to be fixed by another lot of incompetence. I will tell you what the best national partnership is for health: it is the Liberal-National partnership. That is the best partnership for health. That is the best partnership that will actually deliver an outcome.

All we have got in Queensland at the moment is a mountain of debt—$74 billion worth of debt. How on earth can they provide anything or do anything except service their interest bill? This is the sort of fiasco that we have got. Queensland Health has been the epitome of a fiasco. Dr Patel and Bundaberg Hospital—all these things light up in infamy—and there is a litany of other issues. There is the lady who had a child between Emerald and Rockhampton. Unfortunately, the child passed away. Why? Because they could not get access to a hospital. There are these sorts of issues. There is the fact that our ambulances are bouncing around between out-services because they cannot get access. They are being denied access because there is not the capacity to look after the basic delivery of services to the people of Queensland.

We can see that hospitals are the absolute core of security. People want that sense that if they have got a pain in their chest they have a better than a 50-50 chance of seeing a doctor. But what do we have in Queensland? What do the Queensland government do when it comes to fixing up hospitals? They build a football stadium. That is what you do when health services are falling to pieces: you go to the Gold Coast and announce you are going to build a football stadium! This is the sort of priority that these people have. They all go for the glitzy projects and they shy away from the delivery of basic services. But the people of Queensland are waking up to them. The people of Queensland are waiting for this weekend.

Senator Wortley, you are right: there is an election this week. But, Senator Wortley, the swing is on and there is a sense of change. Why? Because they are frustrated, having had two decades—with the exception of a couple of years with Borbidge and Joan Sheldon—of Labor incompetence. They are sick to death of excuses. They are sick to death of this: ‘If you re-elect us it will somehow miraculously get better next time.’ No, it will not get better. In fact, it is getting worse. Every day we used to be in a centre of opulence, with royalties flowing into the treasury, but then it was the Labor Party in government in Queensland that had in excess of $60 billion in debt. Of course, as they have squandered the money they have lost the capacity to deliver basic outcomes in health. So it is about health. And if it is not about health, it is about education. And if it is not about education, it is about transport. On the basic delivery of these items they are completely and utterly incompetent. The Liberal and National parties will bring back hospital boards, to try to bring back a sense of community ownership. We in the Liberal and National parties believe there is a capacity for a person at the local level to know more about their area than some bureaucrat in George Street who has been feathering his own nest for the past two decades. The conservative side of politics has to be handed back the reins to deliver outcomes.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer about employment services that I received from Senator Ludwig, the Minister representing the Minister for Employment Participation, today. The Greens received on our website an anonymous tip-off about this particular issue. The minister reaffirmed at the end of question time that he could not tell me anything more about the process because no final decisions had been made, although he did confirm, when answering my question earlier, that preferred tenderers had been notified. As we understand it, the unsuccessful tenderers have also been notified. At this stage, as far as we can tell, there is a range of not-for-profit community and church providers among them. As I alluded to in my question, we know of one large provider that will have to lay off between 400 and 500 people; that is one provider alone.

We do not know yet who has been given those contracts, because the minister cannot tell us because the process has not been finalised. But we have had suggestions and we have had that tip-off that large for-profit organisations are the successful tenderers and some of those may be from overseas. So here we have overseas for-profit service providers coming in and taking away the contracts of not-for-profit community and church organisations. Consequently, those organisations are having to lay off hundreds, if not thousands, of workers. We have seen—rightly of course—the Prime Minister jumping up and down over the laying off of 1,800 workers by Pacific Brands, and I agree that is a tragedy as well. But here is our own government undermining the service provision of not-for-profit providers in Australia at a time when we are in a global economic crisis and have thousands of unemployed Australians who desperately need joined-up services, who desperately need quality services and who also need the services that these community organisations provide. We need to bear in mind that these not-for-profit organisations use the resources earned through this process and plough them back into service delivery.

They look after our vulnerable people and they provide counselling support for those people who urgently need that sort of support. These people are at their most vulnerable when they have lost their jobs and have families to support. When they are desperately seeking services, here is our government actively undermining not-for-profit organisations.

From the economic stimulus package, we managed to get the government to plough some further funding into supporting counselling services, emergency relief services and the provision of services from the community sector. They are giving with one hand and taking away with the other. These community organisations provide an invaluable service to our community and, in one fell swoop, this government takes away their contracts for the provision of these services. This not only undermines the quality of services that are provided for employment services but also undermines the other services that these organisations can provide.

I also asked during question time about whether WorkDirections UK has been given a contract, and the minister quite rightly said that he cannot give me the information because the final decision has not been made. I appreciate that but we want to be clear what the position is in order to clear the air and debate this issue because, believe me, it is going to be a very hot issue. And the government should note that the undermining of church and community organisations by this decision is absolutely critical to the way our community survives the global economic crisis. Here are the government, with bleeding hearts, saying, ‘We’re into social inclusion, and we’re going to deliver a compact with these community service organisations.’ And what do they do? They take away contracts worth millions of dollars that will lead to the sacking of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who work in the community sector.

I cannot understand the decision making and I will be pursuing this. I want to see how they have been making robust decisions and how they can possibly think that this is serving the community of Australia when overseas providers are coming in and undermining the services. We will want to know whether predatory practices are involved in the approaches that these overseas not-for-profit contractors are taking.

Question agreed to.