Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that question and I think I probably would be supportive of the impossible. We have got to remember that the states—or the colonies, as they were—created the federal government and they wrote pretty precise rules. I do not believe that is achievable, as I am concerned about the achievability of constitutional recognition. I would say, ‘Why bother?’ It is an expensive business. Money is the strength of power. There is no limitation on the two Big Brothers of government, if you like, getting together and saying, ‘We think town X would better run its own hospital.’ We used to have hospital boards in my electorate. But let them run it through local government and, instead of talking all the time about how we want to make local government bodies bigger—and I think there are difficulties with that—give them more jobs to do. I said that to one shire clerk or chief executive, whatever he was, in one country town, and he said, ‘I don’t know if we could manage the hospital.’ I asked, ‘How many staff have you got?’ And he said, ‘Sixty.’ I asked, ‘And how many staff has the hospital got?’ And he said, ‘Forty.’ I said: ‘So where is the problem? Your payroll system and everything can deal with that. And, if your councillors or whoever can interview and appoint a chief executive, why can’t they do the same thing with a director of nursing, for instance?’

I am just putting this forward. It is theoretical. I welcome the minister’s statement, but it does not say much. I welcome the report and I have criticised publicly—I wrote letters—local government for not putting their hand up during that inquiry to say, ‘You tell us what we are and give us some responsibilities that around the world local government does very well, and make sure that the funds that are shared by the Australian government in particular be available in a measurable way.’

As I said, there will always be a role for state governments in running major hospitals. But they will not send doctors out to the bush, because they cannot get a Medicare number, so why not let the local government do that and let probably this parliament make funding arrangements that would assist them in that process? Then they can make some regional arrangements if they like; they do so to some degree in other areas. I think local government is wasted. It does not have funding certainty. It needs both responsibility and funding certainty. (Time expired)

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