Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Special Minister of State and Cabinet Secretary (Senator Ludwig) to questions without notice asked today.

This government have been an absolute failure when it comes to health. They have not fixed public hospitals despite an unequivocal pre-election commitment by the Prime Minister to do so by the middle of 2009. They are putting additional pressure on public hospitals through their misguided ideological attack on Australians doing the right thing by the health system by taking additional responsibility for their own healthcare needs. It is an ideological attack on people with private health insurance. They are now running away, at a million kilometres an hour, from the equally emphatic pre-election commitment that if sufficient progress had not been made by the middle of 2009, the Rudd government would take to the Australian people the proposition that the Commonwealth would take over the running of Australia’s 750 public hospitals.

We have a health minister who is more occupied with doing the bidding of the Treasurer, being the propaganda machine for the Treasurer, than with focusing on implementing and pursuing sound public policy on health. If we had a minister that was more focussed on fixing public hospitals rather than being out there doing the Treasurer’s bidding, perhaps our public hospitals would be a little bit better off. Today I asked a series of questions of Senator Ludwig. I asked, ‘Are Australia’s public hospitals fixed?’ He talked us through a whole series of bureaucratic processes that go on within government. Any government can provide a running list of all the great things they do, but it is outcomes that we are interested in. The Prime Minister did not promise that he would go through a whole series of bureaucratic processes. He promised that Australia’s public hospitals would be fixed. There is evidence in state after state after territory that they are not fixed. We had another half-a-dozen questions to ask, giving examples from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia that Australia’s public hospitals are not fixed.

Even the Prime Minister realises that he will not be able to achieve his emphatic pre-election commitment. Quietly, quietly, hoping that nobody would notice, he made a little change to his website where he talks about the government’s commitment to the health system. This time last year the Prime Minister’s website listed its commitment on health under a headline ‘Fixing our hospitals’. Do you know what it says now? It says, ‘Improving our hospitals’. Last year he was going to fix our hospitals; this year he will be improving our hospitals. I bet he did not think anybody would notice. This was done quietly, sneakily, so that nobody would notice. There is all this back-peddling: ‘We do not want people to think that we are not doing what we are saying we are doing, so we are just going to change what it is that we allegedly promised.’ So ‘fixing’ our hospitals has become ‘improving’ our hospitals.

There are a few other ‘minor’ linguistic changes that I am sure the Senate would be interested to know about. This is what the Prime Minister said last year:

… if significant progress towards the implementation of the reforms—

the national health care reform, in partnership with state and territory governments—

has not been achieved by mid-2009, the Government will seek a mandate from the Australian people at the following federal election for the Commonwealth to take financial control of Australia’s 750 public hospitals.

So last year he referred to ‘significant progress towards implementation’. Now he says, ‘We will develop a long-term reform plan.’ So it is no longer ‘significant progress towards implementation’; it is, ‘By the middle of 2009 we will finalise a plan.’ So the government have gone from, ‘We promise outcomes; we promise to fix hospitals,’ to bureaucratic process language.

This is an absolute disgrace. This government have been a failure in health. They are so blinded by their ideological hatred for private health that that is what has been guiding their first 18 months in office. They have not focused on the main game. They have not focused on what is required—to actually ensure that we have a health system that works. Everything that we have had from this government is spin and rhetoric, no substance whatsoever. It is time that somebody held this government to account for their absolute failure in health.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

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

I understand. We will look at pre-election promises. That is a very easy thing to do. Many senators here can pull those out, chapter and verse. We can read websites as well. We have those skills. In terms of process there needs to be work done to look at what has to be done with our health system. The Rudd government is going to do that work. We will move forward and we will ensure that our system is improved in the future. (Time expired)

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary display of spin today from the Labor government. There is a very simple principle here. The Prime Minister has said, ever since Labor came into government, that they would honour all their election commitments and promises. And they have not. It is a bit unfortunate that I cannot bring some props in here—we are precluded from doing so. If I had one, it would be the size of the front of a newspaper, it would have a very big smiling picture of the Prime Minister on it, it would have a very big smiling picture of Justine Elliot on it, and the caption would be: ‘Kevin Rudd will fix our hospitals’. It does not matter how much spin the other side try to put on this, that paper, in the electorate of Richmond, promised those people in that electorate, and in all of the other electorates that it went to around the country, that Kevin Rudd would fix our hospitals. It is a simple premise.

The other thing he said was that, if there had not been an improvement in the state hospital system, he would move to take over the 750 public hospitals around the country. Neither of those two things can possibly be in dispute, because they were in writing at the time from the Prime Minister. As far as I can tell—and I do not think I am particularly stupid—they are election commitments. So, on the one hand, we have the Prime Minister saying, ‘I’m going to honour all our election commitments’; and here we have some that are about to be broken. This is not something that has come from this side of the chamber; this has come from the Labor government. It was the Labor government that said, ‘We will fix the hospitals.’ It is their promise that they have broken. It is their commitment that they are not going to honour. The improvement is simply not there.

Everybody on this side of the chamber knows that, obviously, on the other side of the chamber they do not spend enough time visiting hospitals—particularly not regional hospitals which are suffering so badly and at which there has been no improvement. And there has been no improvement. You have only got to look at places like Dubbo Hospital, where they have had to go to their local vet to borrow bandages. If that is an improvement, I am completely at a loss. Or look at Coonabarabran Hospital, where they had to stop offering their patients meat, because the local butcher simply could not be paid. Again, if that is an improvement, I am completely at a loss. It is simply wrong to say there has been any improvement. Every single person I talk to in regional communities right across the state tells me that there has been no improvement. And this is no indictment of our doctors and nurses, who do an absolutely brilliant job under the conditions they are asked to work in, in providing those services as best they possibly can for our regional people. For the health minister to come out on 25 May and say there have been ‘positive signs of improvement’ and ‘significant developments’ and ‘improved outcomes’ is bureaucratic rubbish. It is the same bureaucratic rubbish that we heard from the minister today in his answers to questions. He had simply no idea. I am not sure he was even listening to the questions, because the answers he gave bore no relation whatsoever to the questions that were asked. It was bureaucratic rubbish!

From Senator Moore, on the other side, we had more bureaucrat spin about ‘reviews’ and ‘we’re working with’. I think she actually indicated that it was her understanding that what they promised during the election campaign was to work with the states. Rubbish! Their promise was to fix the hospitals. Regardless of what other Labor senators are about to say, that is the absolute truth. They promised, very simply, two clear things. The Prime Minister said he would honour all his election commitments, and fixing our hospitals was one of them. If our hospitals are not fixed, he has broken an election promise to every single person across this country. Every single person across this country should be aware of that. They would remember that, because people talked about it at the time. They would come up and say, ‘Kevin Rudd says he is going to fix our hospitals.’ Weren’t they living in a pipedream thinking he might actually come through and do it! Because he has not. Unless he can pull a rabbit out of the hat in the next five days and fix the hospitals, he has broken an election promise. There are no two ways about it. If he thinks there has been an improvement in our hospital system then he must believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden. Every single person out in our communities knows that our hospitals have not been improved. The Prime Minister should live up to his election promise.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What never ceases to amaze me in this place is the hypocrisy of those opposite. After 18 months in government, I would put our track record up against theirs any day of the week—on health or any other issue. In fact, in the future I will be extremely happy to put up the 12-year record of the Rudd Labor government against the Howard-Costello mess of 12 long years in government. It was really interesting to hear Senator Cormann, who believes he is the new champion of health, talk about what is happening in every state around the country. As usual, the opposition, as they did when they were in government, have neglected Tasmania. They never mention Tasmania. Why? Because it is so embarrassing. If you want to talk about health, let us talk about the Mersey Hospital on the north-west coast of Tasmania. Let us talk about the Howard government intervening in health, shall we? Let us talk about John Howard and his election promises.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann interjecting—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you could give me the courtesy of allowing me to make the point of order, Senator Cormann, that would be useful. A bit of interjection is the usual practice, but those of us on this side listened in relative silence to the contributions of those on the other side. Senator Polley, at the moment, has five coalition senators interjecting against her. Could they at least do it sequentially and observe a modicum of decorum in this place.

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

There is no point of order. Senator Polley.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. We on this side realise we have hit a nerve when they—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, just to clarify: are you ruling that interjections are in order?

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

No. Senator Wong, I have been in the chamber for a long time today and I have heard much louder interjections than what I heard in the past minute or two.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I always feel like I have hit a home run when they start interjecting. They do not like to hear the facts. They do not want to go back to the history of 12 long years of neglect by the Howard government. We are talking about the Mersey Hospital on the north-west coast of Tasmania. I notice that there are not any Tasmanian coalition senators here, because they are embarrassed—

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, there are.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not hear them interjecting about the north-west coast. If it is Senator Parry—I can only see a bit of a bald head—he would be joining me, because he has been on record in the media in relation to how he felt about the Howard-Costello intervention in the Mersey Hospital and the damage that was done there. At least he has the courtesy to listen rather than interject. As I said, I would be very happy to stand on this side of the chamber in 12 years and put the Rudd Labor government’s record up against yours any day of the week.

When it comes to health, can we talk about what has really happened. I take Senator Nash’s concerns. I understand that she has a genuine concern on regional and rural health. I acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that Senator Humphries has a genuine interest in health. But I do not think there are many senators who can talk more about rural health than those on both sides of the chamber who represent Tasmania. I represent Tasmania and my home city of Launceston. I want to put on record that it is not just spin by government senators, as has been indicated by Senator Nash.

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

Order! The clock has been frozen at three minutes and 40 seconds for some time. It takes a very powerful speech, Senator Polley, to stall the clock!

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope I am not going to be robbed now, because I am really enjoying the opportunity—

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

I think we are being quite generous to you, Senator Polley. You may get some extra time.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And so you should be! Thank you, Mr Deputy President. It is important for the Australian community and, in particular, the Tasmanian community to have their voices heard in this place. I am talking about the huge injection of funds into the Launceston General Hospital and what it is going to mean to all Tasmanians and, in particular, those in the north of the state. In fact, some $40 million has been allocated to enhance the services that are already provided by the Launceston General Hospital. What that means to the local people is that there will be better services. There has been an injection of money to attract nurses back into the field. Because of the neglect of the Howard government in terms of skilling, we are trying to ensure, as a responsible government would, that we have more GPs and doctors trained. We are trying to ensure that we have an environment where nurses want to continue in the workforce and where those who leave the workforce to have a family will have an enticement and an inducement to come back into this very important area.

In relation to promises and election commitments, I think it is a bit rich for the other side to lecture us, after 18 months in government, on not delivering on election commitments. When we talk about the buck stopping with Kevin Rudd, yes it does. But this week we are seeing the buck stop with Eric Abetz and Malcolm Turnbull.

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

Order! Senator Polley, you have been in this place long enough to know to refer to people by their proper titles.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will respectfully refer to Senator Abetz and to Mr Turnbull. In terms of the blame game, we acknowledge that this is not the entire responsibility of the federal government in terms of our state public health system; it is also the responsibility of the state and territory governments. I have been listening to the opposition for 2½ years constantly blaming the states over health. We have actually taken some decisive action. The health system will not be repaired quickly; I think it is totally unrealistic of those opposite to come in and expect us, after 12 years of neglect, to be able to fix everything in 18 months.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You made the promise.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the interjection, because what I am doing is hitting a raw nerve in those opposite. They do not like to hear about the truth and they do not like to actually have the facts. What they want to do is engage in rhetoric because they have no substance, they have absolutely nothing. If we want to talk about commitments and flip-flops, I think that trophy goes fairly to those on the opposite side. But I think you will find that the Australian public has, as I know the Tasmanian community has, welcomed the strong and compassionate interest that this government has demonstrated very clearly in the first 18 months of where we see the future of health in this country. We are the ones who are working to ensure that there are more GPs. We are the ones who are working to ensure that there are more nurses coming back. We are the government that is doing more for regional and rural health and acknowledging the difficulties that the community in those areas experience. (Time expired)

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Despite an extended period of time for her contribution, Senator Polley did not really touch on the issue raised by Senator Cormann, namely the minister’s inability to explain how in five days the government is going to keep the promise made by the Prime Minister to fix our public hospital system. Of course, the answer that the minister could not bring himself to utter is that he can’t and they won’t, and the government has made an empty and vacuous promise which is going to leave a great many Australians disappointed.

Senator Cormann in his contribution made a very appropriate and very timely point in this debate, which is that we have a system today which responds to outcomes, which is about outcomes as far as Australians are concerned. Australians do not go into their public hospital and go to the emergency department at 10 o’clock at night and sit there until five o’clock the following morning waiting to get some ailment dealt with and say, ‘Thank goodness the federal government has pumped another $64 billion into our public hospital system. We would have been here until midday.’ They do not say that. They want to know what happened to the promise to fix the hospital system. If there was evidence available to the Australian public that there were actually improving outcomes in public hospitals around the country, there would be some basis for thinking that perhaps we had not quite fixed them but we were at least fixing them or in the process of doing that. But the evidence is to the contrary: waiting lists going up, times for elective surgery increasing. It was 34 days last year, two days longer than the previous year. Waiting times in public hospital emergency departments are going up. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are having to wait 2½ times the rate of other Australians to get elective surgery. There is a whole list of statistics indicating that Australia is going backwards.

The reliance on the question of inputs, on what we are doing and what we are putting into the system, rather than what is coming out of the system, underlines the mistake the Labor Party is making. There is an issue about how you deliver reform in our public hospital system. You guys are relying on shovelling X billion dollars into the state hospital systems hoping it is going to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the evidence is absolutely compelling that it will make the problem worse rather than better. We have no indication that these people have any capacity to deliver better outcomes no matter how much extra money is pumped in. The consultation you are undertaking, the extra dollars you are throwing in, may not be the best way the public can see better outcomes in the system. Certainly to date they have not seen those better outcomes. Have the decency to tell the Australian people what you mean by ‘fixing the public hospital system’. Tell them what you mean by that. What can they look at as an indication that things are getting better in their public hospital system? If you cannot do that much, your promise is not worth very much. Your promise about improving the system even is not worth very much if you cannot tell us now what the benchmarks are that you are going to use to reflect the improvements that you say you are going to make to our system.

The solution to this issue is very simple: have the guts to do what you did with, for example, that promise to create a department of homeland security. It was a silly promise. You worked out after a few weeks of government that it was not going to make any sense, you had a little review and you quietly dumped the idea; no more department of homeland security. Well, next Tuesday is a good time to come clean, for Kevin Rudd to get up there in one of his media conferences and say, ‘Look, by the way, I said something 18 months or two years ago which was a little bit on the stupid side. I promised to fix our public hospital system by today. I haven’t done that. Sorry about that. We will find some other measure to work out how we are going to make things better in our public hospital system.’ And we would respect him for it. Unfortunately, the government’s response to the failure of its promise is more frightening than the fact that the promise has been broken. Its response has been simply to channel vast amounts of money into state government bureaucracies which have demonstrated a spectacular lack of ability to actually make a difference in a positive way. You are not the first government to pump extra money into our system; it has been happening for years and years. It happened under the Howard government as well. Unfortunately, the vehicle for doing that leaves a great deal to be desired.

You held the tantalising hope out to the Australian people that you might take on responsibility for Australia’s public hospitals. That appears to be part of the cruel hoax that you engaged in when making that promise. You apparently have no intention of putting that to a referendum anymore or considering that issue anymore. If I am wrong, tell me so. The fact is that you have broken your promise big-time and you should admit it. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.