Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Hansard source

The mountain is climbed—you are up the top, Mr Roy; enjoy the sunshine. To the many people who would have said why it would not happen, why it could not happen, why it was unlikely to happen: one man who happens to be young set about proving why it would happen—and it did. You are freed, in order to be bound again in public service. But let us also remember that anything that can happen once can surely happen a second time, although it may not be for a very long time.

The National Health and Hospitals Network Bill 2010 is not about safety and quality in health care, as I have already explained. This is about another enormous statutory authority that further represents a slew of bureaucratic legislation coming from this Labor government. There were fast-moving, streamlined, safety and quality boards and commissions before. We did not need a multimillion-dollar solution to further slow down the work of this place. But this is not a single piece of legislation on its own. We see other pieces of legislation introducing even more statutory authorities into health care in this country, while the conditions in remote and rural Australia continue to decline.

We know the words ‘Closing the Gap’. But the one single intervention, the Northern Territory Emergency Response, has been utterly ignored and the back has been turned by this government on outcomes since 2007 and the election of the Rudd government. Because, while their lips move and suggest that the intervention is supported, the safety of children and the quality of health care continues to struggle for the simple reason that there is no commitment to improving this intervention.

Last week the Bath report delivered to the Territory government found not a single element of personal responsibility involved in the disgraceful area of child abuse, but instead they set about making 147 bureaucratic recommendations to the Territory government. No wonder that jurisdiction has lost its way. The recommendations from the Bath inquiry suggested that we needed more process, framework, agencies, peak bodies, principles, consultation, planning processes, preventions, complaint processes, education strategies, more advisors, planning units, more KPIs, workforce mediation, more outsourcing, clarity, administration, more training, more data collection, partnerships, more frameworks to be adopted, more skills to be evaluated, more consulting, more initiatives, more strategies and, yes, more guidelines. You would think that the Bath inquiry only came to an end when they ran out of bureaucratic nouns! They got to 147 of them. But was there a single mention of personal responsibility? Was there a single mention that parenting is something that needs to be the first and foremost role of every parent?

In the NT intervention, where for the first time in Indigenous history a systematic move was made against alcohol abuse for the sake of the children, towards school attendance for the sake of the children, towards health checks for the sake of the children, we see not a single modification or reform being made. And what do we know as a result? From 2008 to 2009 enrolments in school have declined. Attendance at school has declined. The reporting of domestic violence and alcohol related infringements have fallen away. What we are saying is there have been no improvements; the lips are moving but the warmth of the embrace is not there for that intervention—and with it goes the future of an entire generation of children who are seeking safety and quality in their health care.

Another report passed my desk this week: the Better hospital care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people experiencing heart attack. Again, it has been three years now—the time is ticking. But there has been no improvement in Indigenous liaison, no improvement in cultural familiarity for staff, no improvement in introducing Indigenous people to the governance of our hospitals, no improvement in making mainstream services better for Indigenous people. We have a 20-times rate of early discharge by Indigenous Australians, who check out and walk out of the best health care in the world for the simple reason that it is not one with which they are familiar, not one to which they have been introduced to or are able to feel safe and comfortably culturally. That is a priority of the National Heart Foundation; it must be a priority of this government. It should not sit for weeks and months without response. It is of the essence of safety and quality. It is one thing to be getting the drugs or the infusion wrong, or to have adverse reactions in the First World health system that we all enjoy; but quite another when you look through the reams and reams of bureaucratic legislation we are faced with on this side of the House. As I said: the lips are moving, but nothing is changing in remote, regional and Indigenous Australia.

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