Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As always, I welcome the opportunity to speak on the bills that come before the House and that I have a special interest in. It is always good to follow the member for Kingston, and it is funny how it has worked out on so many occasions in recent times—although I would say that obviously we see things in a completely different light.

When you go to front doors around this country and have the opportunity to speak to people and you ask them what issues are of concern to them, it is normal that the default issues, if they can think of nothing else—if they can think of nothing that affects their street or that is really burning them—are always health and education. So the feeling of Australians all the way around this country is that everyone is interested in better health—and obviously education, but on this occasion I speak of health. It is one of those default issues that we will often see and often hear about, and therefore it remains forever in the minds of Australians. It is also the case that everybody in this country—and in this parliament—wants better health. There is no doubt about that. As I also say in schools within the electorate of Cowan, both sides of this parliament believe in making this country the best it can be but the way to get there is where the difference is. The way we make this country as good as it can be and the way we make the health system in this country as good as it can be are the differences between the two sides. This is certainly the case tonight and in the debate on this bill.

When you look at what the government proposes—and I will go into some more detail on these things a little bit later—there have been plenty of grand statements and the usual thrown-in lines of 'decisive', 'historic' and maybe even 'groundbreaking'. In the end there is no doubt that there have been big promises. Unfortunately, in the case of this government, as is also the case with the big bureaucracies, there are calls for revolution and historic agreements, but at the heart of it you will always find a big bureaucracy that just appears. As always, that is the illusion of progress on the government side.

I begin my contribution tonight by congratulating Colin Barnett, the Premier of Western Australia. It was he who led the way for the states standing strong against the federal government and getting the government to back down so comprehensively on these so-called hospital reforms. As usual, what was on offer represented a further degradation of the relationship between the government and the powerhouse of this nation—I am of course referring to my home state of Western Australia. It represented a further loss of federal support to Western Australia and a further drift of a fair go from the west to the east, and therefore in our opposition to the federal government's plans we assisted in providing the opportunity for Colin Barnett to extract a better deal for our state. We should feel vindicated on the value of holding such a deal up to the light of scrutiny in this place.

The federal government originally said that it would take back a third of the GST. It was going to rewrite the intent of the GST—that growth funding for the states—and take that money back for the Commonwealth. Yet what we have seen is the big back down in a complete reversal of that 30 per cent GST clawback, which is to be replaced instead by an additional $1.6 billion for Western Australia over six years. This is another back down and further evidence of the inability of this Gillard-Brown government to match what it announces with what outcome eventually results. There have been plenty of such failures, but in order to remain relevant to this bill tonight I will have to go there on other occasions. I will not reiterate the failings of this government beyond the policy areas that we are discussing tonight and as relate to this legislation.

I would, however, like to set the scene before moving on. When I speak in my electorate I remind people that the job of government is to establish the basis on which people can succeed. It is not the role of government, at least under the coalition's political philosophy, to be at the centre of national life. Rather, we should see individuals, families and small businesses as the centre of our national success, supported with the tools to enable that success. Government should be in support, rather than telling individuals in a proscriptive manner how they should do everything in their lives. The first resort of this Gillard government is more regulation and, as we see time after time, more and more taxes. Less regulation is required, not more. Greater freedom for innovative Australian businesses and individuals is required, not the stifling nature of an increasing regulatory burden and additional bureaucracies, although more Public Service positions in Canberra are no doubt welcomed by the members for Canberra and Fraser, particularly as the cost is borne by the rest of the country.

When I speak of additional bureaucracies it brings us to the bill that we are debating today, the National Health Reform Amendment (National Health Performance Authority) Bill 2011. This bill has the central intent of establishing the National Health Performance Authority and it will also see the establishment of the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority. The task of the National Health Performance Authority is stated to be the monitoring and reporting on the performance of local hospital networks, public and private hospitals, primary healthcare organisations and other bodies that provide healthcare services. Reflecting more locally on this, I wonder whether the authority will be able at some point to report on the Wanneroo superclinic—or perhaps they would do so if they could find it. I note, as we approach the fourth anniversary of the announcement of the Wanneroo superclinic, that it still does not exist and many are wondering how many more anniversaries will pass before a patient is actually seen at this illusory superclinic.

Should the Wanneroo superclinic ever open, it should meet the expectations of the people in my electorate. By that I mean it must be in the suburb of Wanneroo, it must be in addition to existing clinics, it must have a significant increase in the number of general practitioners available to be seen and it must comprise allied health services that are not just moved from elsewhere in Wanneroo to this other location but provided in addition to those allied health services already in existence within the Wanneroo area. What I have described are the expectations of the people of Cowan and particularly the people of Wanneroo. Those are the expectations that were built up in the lead-up to the 2007 election by the then opposition and now government. I support the delivery of exactly those additional health services as I have described on behalf of the Wanneroo community. I also reject any attempt to rebadge existing services and their representation as new services, because that would be nothing but spin. If this bill is successful, perhaps the National Health Performance Authority will be able to support the spin or, if they are truly independent, they will tell it like it is. We will see how this bill proceeds and then how the authority proceeds in the future. Of course, a lot has changed since the time when the so-called health reform plan was conceived. What we have seen is that the plan has been greatly modified, and not only along the lines of the backflip that saw a better deal extracted for Western Australia. Having been beaten up by Colin Barnett, leading to that backflip, the plan had other changes made to it as well. We can look at those changes to see how that original plan has been changed dramatically. Firstly, under this bill the substantial involvement and power of the federal health minister over the authority has been wound back. The submissions to the Senate inquiry noted how the original plan neglected the role of the states as managers, owners and operators of the state hospitals and other health service deliveries. The latest Australian Health Ministers Conference resulted in an agreement limiting the actions of the federal minister without state agreement and empowering the role of states in dealing with matters associated with the National Health Performance Authority, whilst recognising in this legislation the states' roles and authority over local health networks as well as public hospitals and providing for greater involvement and oversight from the Council of Australian Governments.

Specifically, the amended bill that we have here will see the acknowledgement of the role of state and territory health ministers as health system managers in relation to local hospital networks and public hospitals and that, in relation to local health networks or public hospitals, the federal parliament intends that the National Health Performance Authority should have regard to the role of state and territory ministers for health. In fact, the amendments that this bill brings forward will establish the National Health Performance Authority with regard to and involvement of the states but with less involvement by the federal minister. The reality is that the states, led by Western Australia, have forced the government to back down repeatedly on health matters.

Let me now be very clear about this bill. The coalition opposes the establishment of these sorts of new bureaucracies, and that will always be the case. Like so many other stakeholders who gave evidence before the Senate committee, we believe it is the right thing for this bill to be deferred until more information and the regulations are available, so that all the matters concerned with the authority can be properly assessed. As in our direct action plan on health at the last election, we oppose new bureaucracies. We instead believe that the funding for the new bureaucracies should be directed to actual frontline services, as outlined in our Real Action on Hospitals and Nursing policy and our Real Action Plan for Better Mental Health policy.

This country does not need an increase in bureaucracy, a complicated funding structure and no guarantee that funding will flow to frontline services. Rather, a health policy in Australia should be the 'beds and boards' policy of the coalition: direct action that will make a real difference by directly tying increased funding to the delivery of increased services—in effect, the productivity that this country so much needs in so many ways but that unfortunately has been missing in recent times. The government wants more bureaucracy, while we as a coalition government would reduce centralised bureaucracies and allow hospitals to better respond to the needs of patients and healthcare workers. As we know, the differences between the Labor Party and the coalition do not end there. We at least appreciate that our plan, Real Action on Hospitals and Nursing, must take pressure off the public system, and part of that involves work to ensure private health insurance premiums remain affordable. That is one of the tenets that we stand by, that we must retain full private health insurance rebates for all Australians.

The reality is that our health system is fundamentally a good one. Of course, it can always be better. When you visit most of the rest of the world you can see that our system really does stack up very well compared to others. But that should never remove the requirement for us to look for ways to improve our system. The reality is that we are better than most competing nations of our standard and those in the region. But our assessment should be based on our own criticism of ourselves, not on looking at other systems as being more favourable than ours. It is certainly the case that we need to improve, and we should always be looking at the fundamental responsibility of the parliament as a way to improve our health system.

When you look at what this bill puts before us, there is a shortage of information. There is a need for more to come out about this and for the regulations to be looked at. The stakeholders agree with this. So the right thing for the government to do is to take this bill off the program until all that information is available.

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