Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister outline to the House the government’s future plans to train more nurses to help strengthen the Australian health system? Is the Prime Minister aware of alternative approaches to future plans?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Greenway for asking me a question regarding the practical response to the shortage of nurses in Australia which I announced on Friday at the St George Private Hospital, along with the Minister for Health and Ageing. What this very practical policy does not involve is the establishment of a committee or an agency; it just involves doing something.

I saw the Leader of the Opposition with his pseudo-American, ersatz launch of the campaign on Saturday. There he was, complete with—what do you call them?—teleprompters, rear vision mirrors, those things that have your words printed on them. I thought to myself, ‘Here is American politics, arrived in Australia big-time.’ I thought I was the bloke who was too close to the Americans! You could have fooled me, Mr Speaker.

Anyway, let me return to something that is far more important than the Leader of the Opposition’s meeting in Penrith, and that is the practical announcement I made on Friday, along with the health minister, to establish 25 Australian hospital nursing schools at a cost of $170 million over five years. What this will do is allow young men and women to leave school and start working as a nurse immediately. So, far from it being a return to the old days, it is an embrace of a common-sense approach. I have been greatly encouraged by the positive reaction to this proposal from so many men and women in the nursing profession. This will provide enrolled nurse hospital based training within major public and private hospitals at diploma or advanced diploma level.

What the government will do is fund infrastructure for on-site educational facilities and pay for up to four clinical training staff at each participating hospital. Over five years we will provide $20 million in wage subsidies to provide incentives to students. It will be $500 a student per week to hospital nursing schools for the first three months that the young man or woman is undertaking the training, recognising that in those first three months the hospital will need some financial help in order to engage them. We will pay a tax-free $1,500 commencement bonus and a $2,500 completion bonus per student, paid to each hospital nursing school, plus the direct payment to students—the tax-free bonus—of $2,000 after six months and a further tax-free bonus of $3,000 on completion.

We expect more than 500 students undertaking training alone in those 25 schools each year. These places, let me stress, are over and above the places provided through the university system. They include the 3,700 new commencing nursing places since 2005, which will grow to over 10,100 by 2011. It also includes the 395 new commencing university places announced by the Minister for Education, Science and Training last week. We have increased funding for nursing clinical training from $690 to $1,045 per nursing unit of study and we have increased the per student funding for university based nursing courses next year by $109 per student. Therefore, in total last week we increased nursing training places by some 900—and that, incidentally, is broadly consistent with the call by the Australian Nursing Federation and other peak nursing groups for 1,000 initial nursing places for training from 2009.

I mention that because the Leader of the Opposition, in a negative way, was bagging this proposal, saying it was wrong, saying it was a lurch back to the 1950s. Yet I have in my possession a letter dated 13 August 2007, over the joint signatures of Jill Iliffe, the Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation; Rosemary Bryant, the Executive Director of the Royal College of Nursing; Karen Cook, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council; Sally Goold, the Chairperson of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses; John Daly, Chair of the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery; and Barbara Vernon, the Executive Officer of the Australian College of Midwives. All of these organisations together wrote to the minister and said what they wanted was an additional 1,000 fully funded places each year beginning in 2009. The combined announcements I made and the minister made last week provide 900 of that 1,000. So for the life of me I do not know what the Leader of the Opposition was getting at last week when he attacked this proposal.

This is a practical response to a difficult issue. It will encourage people to go straight from school. People who want to be nurses can become nurses from day one. They will have the opportunity of experiencing what it is like from the very beginning. If they do not like it, they will give it away, but they will not have to spend some 18 months to two years at university before having any real interaction with a hospital for a sustained period of time. It makes common sense to provide an additional stream, and I want to commend the minister for working up this proposal. He has brought his customary energy to it and I think it is going to be widely accepted in the Australian community. I do not for the life of me know what the Leader of the Opposition was getting at last Friday.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, isn’t it the case that in the lead-up to the 2004 federal election the government was advised that Australia required an additional 19,000 enrolled and registered nurses? Isn’t it also the case that over the last three years nearly 10,000 applicants for nursing places have been turned away from our universities? Can the Prime Minister confirm that the government’s pre-election announcement just now on nursing schools will only provide a maximum of 500 additional nurses per year? Given the Prime Minister’s previous answer, where he said it was his responsibility to do something about the nursing crisis, why has the Prime Minister conspicuously failed to do so over the last three years?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is quite obvious that the Leader of the Opposition did not listen to the last answer I gave. I actually announced something. I did not announce the establishment of ‘Infrastructure Australia’. I did not announce the establishment of a ‘National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’. Can I say to the Leader of the Opposition that spin and process is no substitute for substance.

I have done a little bit of homework and I have gone through some of these lists. Every time the Leader of the Opposition opens his mouth he establishes a new committee or a new inquiry. We have got, for example, the new ‘Department of Homeland Security’; we have got the new ‘Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research’; we have got the new ‘Minister for Housing and Urban Development’; we have got ‘Coast Guard’; we have got ‘FairWork Australia’—

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. None of this goes to what he has done for the last four years—

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will resume her seat. The Prime Minister is illustrating his answer. He is in order.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have got the ‘Office of Climate Change’; we have got the ‘Office of National Security’; we have got the ‘Office of Work and Family’; we have got the ‘Office of Early Childhood Education’. And, as for inquiries, we have got a cost of living, pressures for older Australians inquiry; we have got a grocery inquiry; we have got the Garnaut climate change inquiry; we have got the federal and state relations review—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, a point of order on relevance.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will resume his seat. I will rule on his point of order. The member will be aware that the question was rather long and the Prime Minister is certainly answering the question. The Prime Minister is in order.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition leader asked me about the structure of government—so I go on. We have got a review of federal and state relations; we have a review of defence bases; we have got a review of ADF pay and conditions; we have got a review of government innovation and industry assistance programs—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, a point of order under standing order 104.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister has only just begun to continue his answer. I call the Prime Minister, and if there are frivolous points of order taken I will deal with them.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Instead of announcing inquiries, we actually announced proposals—we actually announced a plan or a policy. If the Leader of the Opposition had been thinking about nurses, he would have announced another inquiry, and he would no doubt have had that spokesman from the Nursing Federation that attacked our proposal as the first person to fill a position on the inquiry so he would know what was the result. I do not want to bore the House, but this list goes on and on. Can I say that in Australian politics at the present time there is only one list longer than this and that is the list of the former trade union officials that will constitute the federal parliamentary Labor Party, irrespective of the result, after the next federal election.