Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak today to this important bill, which puts in place the first piece of Labor’s historic health reform agenda, our National Health and Hospitals Network, and of course I oppose the amendment moved last night by the member for Dickson.

The National Health and Hospitals Network Bill 2010 gives the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care the role of setting national clinical standards and strengthening clinical governance. Later amendments will include provisions to establish the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority and the National Performance Authority, other elements of the National Health and Hospitals Network.

Through his amendment, the member for Dickson seeks to create a legislative logjam. As we all know, all states and territories bar Western Australia have signed up to Labor’s National Health and Hospitals Network Agreement. As the Prime Minister said in her recent press conference, we are going to keep talking to Western Australia. Notwithstanding that state’s continued absence and the obstructionist behaviour of the member for Dickson, this week is a historic week in this parliament for Australia’s healthcare system. As the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Treasurer announced yesterday, the government will be introducing legislation this week to allow the Commonwealth, for the first time, to take majority funding responsibility for public hospitals and full responsibility for primary care. This legislation, should it win the backing of the parliament and clear the roadblocks put up by the likes of the member for Dickson, will ensure that, for the first time, the federal government fairly and transparently funds Australia’s public hospitals, and that is a good thing.

For the first time, the Commonwealth will fund hospitals for each service they provide rather than through block grants. This will allow us as a nation to address the burgeoning demand in regions like mine and help ease the pressure on our hospital waiting lists. I hope the opposition will support this historic legislation when it comes before this place. Hope springs eternal. Delay will only hurt those who need the boost to health services most—those who face longer waiting times in emergency departments and further elective surgery delays.

As the minister for health pointed out in her second reading speech, the bill in question today establishes, in the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, a permanent, independent safety and quality body. This government is determined to drive improvements in quality and to safeguard high standards of care for all Australians. This is a key part of Labor’s health reform agenda. We appreciate that Australians have a right to demand the consistent, high-quality care they deserve, wherever they live. That is true whether you are in Woy Woy or Wagga Wagga, Gosford or Goondiwindi.

I can bear witness personally to the expectations of the people in Woy Woy and Gosford because of the thousands of people I have spoken to over the last nine months on the Central Coast. Equity of access to health care is the biggest health issue for the people of my electorate. One Sunday afternoon, as I was out meeting people in Terrigal, I met a woman who had been blessed with good health. In fact, she had been so well that she had not been to the doctor for eight years. It sounded like a good news story to me, but she went on to tell me that in the previous week she had become unwell. When she returned to her former doctor—whom her husband and her daughter were seeing—she was told that the books were full and she was no longer eligible to be a patient. This was a story I heard over and over, particularly from new residents in the area.

While meeting people in Umina I met a lady who disclosed to me, in the most frank and generous way—which is something many of us find when we meet people in the community—that she had a urinary tract infection but could not get in to see her doctor for two weeks. The result was that she ended up as a triage level 5 patient at the emergency centre at Gosford Hospital. These are issues that only a Labor government is committed to addressing, which is part of the reason the support for Labor on the Central Coast was so strong. People understand that we have a plan that will increase equity and access.

Another GP superclinic for our region will certainly help meet the needs I have just articulated. There is already a GP superclinic underway in Warnervale and another one due to be built in Robertson. Last night we heard a lot of nonsense on GP superclinics from the opposition. This is a superior model of care. We acknowledge the work of local GPs and their efforts in their practices, but the GP superclinic model really does have the health consumer at the centre of it, and I urge GPs to embrace the model.

Over time, Labor’s commitment to training more doctors and nurses will make a difference too: 1,000 extra nurses every year nationally and an additional 5½ thousand GPs and 680 specialist doctors over the next decade. Earlier this month the Prime Minister and the minister for health expanded on that announcement by allocating funding for clinical training for up to 12,000 more medical, nursing and allied health students. We are investing in the health system of the future for the future of all Australians.

My impressions of the overwhelming demand for health services on the Central Coast were forged by my extensive doorknocking across the region. Those impressions have been further reinforced in the meetings I have had over the past few weeks with many Central Coast health providers: the area health service, the Central Coast Division of General Practice and a number of others. On the Central Coast, Labor is meeting that demand through the funding of a number of initiatives, such as the $38.6 million regional cancer centre at Gosford Hospital. I was proud to be there on 14 April this year when the former Prime Minister announced the funding, $28.6 million of which is being contributed by the Commonwealth.

There is much more. Earlier this month I had the pleasure of being at Gosford Hospital with New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally for the announcement of $1.6 million in funding to replace Gosford Hospital’s cardiac catheterisation lab. The patient I spoke to was very pleased at the prospect of undergoing his procedure close to home.

I was also with the minister for health at Gosford Hospital back in August when she announced $5 million in new beds and equipment. That means 16 new acute care beds and new emergency department equipment. I also obtained an insight into the future planning focus for Gosford Hospital, our region’s main teaching hospital. Management there are looking at enhancing surgical capacity, including theatres, acute surgical models and day-only capacity; enhancing the capacity of the emergency department, including the paediatric area and an emergency medical unit; enhancing acute medical and surgical beds; enhancing intensive care capacity; and creating in-patient rehabilitation beds. These are ambitious plans to meet the pressing needs of the community, which has every right to expect the highest possible standards.

Labor is the only party that is addressing the real health needs of the Central Coast community. We are recognising particular needs in particular places. We are liberating local voices by responding to what is actually needed on the ground. In contrast, during the previous election campaign the Liberals were shameless. They presented an uncosted, sham proposal to rebuild Woy Woy Hospital. What they proposed would barely have paid for a refit of the building. Like the entire coalition election campaign, this was nothing short of a confidence trick. I am pleased to say that the public on the Central Coast were not taken in. They know that they deserve better than that.

Our growing region deserves the best quality health care it can get. That is where the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care comes in. It will be the body that develops the standards that make up the new National Health and Hospital Network’s performance and accountability framework. Having our own local health network—a key part of Labor’s reforms—cannot come soon enough for the people of the Central Coast. There is a sense of pride and relief among those of us on the coast that this has finally come to pass.

I feel that the Central Coast is emerging from the shadow of its larger metropolitan neighbours to the north and to the south to cement its regional identity. It is something the member for Dobell and I talk about often. We have a population the size of Canberra. We have our own football team, the Central Coast Mariners, and we might even have a rugby league team, the Bears, in the near future. Soon we shall be unchained from the health bureaucrats of northern Sydney and we will have our own Central Coast area health service. If I may borrow from the words of Martin Luther King, I know there are many health providers and consumers on the Central Coast who are relishing the day that they can say, ‘Free at last, free at last—thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.’

I know the provision of health services across our collection of villages in Robertson will present a challenge to whichever body is charged with that duty, but being able to exercise some local control and having the case mix funding model working in our favour are two things I know the local health providers are also looking forward to. I am sure our local clinicians on the Central Coast will work constructively and cooperatively with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care when it becomes operational to establish and ensure continuity of best practice clinical care. The commission is due to begin operations as a permanent independent body on 1 July next year. This legislation will formulate the commission as a permanent statutory authority under the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act. It will have a board of directors with a chair and seven to nine other members with substantial experience or knowledge and significant standing in public administration in relation to health care. A chief executive officer will be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the commission.

I note that our parliamentary colleagues in the other place have already referred this bill to their Community Affairs Legislation Committee for scrutiny, with a report due on 18 November. I hope that health consumers across the country will have some certainty after that date. I note that funding of $35.2 million has been set aside by the Commonwealth over the next four years for the commission to do its work. That funding will be augmented by funding from states and territories who are part of the National Health and Hospital Networks agreement. I commend the bill to the House and oppose the second reading amendment, which will simply create another unnecessary delay.

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