Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The Commonwealth’s responsibility is to ensure that proper funding levels are delivered to the states, who run the health system. Secondly, I am not familiar with the details of the individual management practices in the state health authority of New South Wales as they apply to the hospital which the honourable member is concerned about. Of course, there are problems with the administration of certain hospitals across the country, including in New South Wales. We fully accept that, but the bottom line for the Commonwealth is to ensure that there is a proper forward funding stream for the states, who run the hospital system. I suggest the honourable member get behind the government’s program of delivering proper funding to the states long term so that these hospitals within state health authorities can have certainty about their funding stream into the future.

This is a complex area of public policy. There are 750-plus public hospitals across this country. Each of them is administered separately by state and territory health authorities but, you know something, the bottom line is to make sure that the Commonwealth is in there as part of the solution, not simply perpetuating the blame game, as those opposite under repeated health ministers did for 12 years.

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