Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

King O’Malley! My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, two key principles have driven the health and hospital reform agenda so far: the principle of equity and the desperate need for a fair share of resources to go throughout the whole system and also the principle of efficiency being rewarded, not ignored. Prime Minister, can you therefore assure the House that the investment in these two key principles by many, many people to date will be at the heart of next week’s reform meetings with the states and that you will deliver these principles in this, the most important, area of national reform?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I do think I should take this opportunity to record my objection to the beard too—it is something I have said to him face to face. I do not know what has happened over the summer season, but we have Rob Oakeshott here and Dennis Shanahan up there and they are both very poor judgment calls, Mr Speaker! We will see what happens by the time the parliament sits next.

On the important question of health, I can assure the member that, when COAG meets in the coming few days and I sit with premiers and chief ministers from around the nation to talk about health, I will be centrally guided by the principles of equity and efficiency that he points to. When we look at our healthcare system, as a nation we face a profound challenge of rapidly escalating healthcare costs. We face a profound challenge where currently, under the arrangements we have known to date, the level of government most exposed to those rapidly escalating healthcare costs is the level of government least able to efficiently raise the additional moneys required. We know that if we leave that undisturbed over the long term it will ultimately overwhelm the revenue-raising capacity of states.

Of course, as states come to this task they are trying to build on the foundations left by the Leader of the Opposition, which included a $1 billion cutback to hospitals and insufficient investment in the health workforce, so we are short of doctors, short of nurses and short of the dedicated professionals that go to make a healthcare system. But we need now to grasp this reform challenge. Clearly some great work has been done to date, but there is more to do and I am hoping that, in the coming few days, I can, in the national interest, strike agreements with premiers and with chief ministers.

I know that the member who asked the question is always very concerned about spatial fairness—the fairness between urban Australia and rural and regional Australia—when it comes to the allocation of healthcare funds and health efforts. I know he is very concerned about statistics like the cancer rates, which show survivability from cancer is lower in rural and regional Australia. I can assure him that these things are at the heart of what I am thinking about as we work through these reforms. In addition, I can assure him that efficiency—activity based funding drivers that actually make sure our healthcare dollar goes where it can do the most good and work the hardest—is also at the centre of the reform agenda of the government. I thank him for the question. It is a very important issue and I hope by the time the House next meets I will be in a position to advise him of what I am very much determined should be successful outcomes from COAG.