Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to take all of the comments. This is consideration in detail. I am happy to take any objections, questions and queries that people have and deal with them all at once. I do not think that it will serve the House that well for us to prolong this if there are not new issues to discuss.

I think we need to bring some of the detailed information back to the focus of the House, and I can pick up the points that the member for Lyne is making and some that the shadow minister is making. I think people are confusing things and alleging things about the original bill that was put forward. At the time that it was put forward we clearly stated that there were still to be negotiations with the states and territories and that amendments would be moved; we said that on day one. We also acknowledged that there was a lot of interest and that there would be inquiries in both the House and the Senate, and we understood that that might lead to some changes. That is the sort of open policymaking that people ask for from governments. Yes, you could do it differently—you could have an exposure draft; you could do some negotiations first—but ultimately the parliament enables this process, and we have been pretty up-front about it. So I do not think there is anything peculiar in the way that the member for Dickson seems to be suggesting—that, because there are a lot of amendments, that is somehow a bad reflection on the process. I think it actually shows that the process, as we indicated from the beginning, has worked quite well.

But where the confusion seems to come in is that these amendments are being seen as a removal of Commonwealth power when actually what this legislation is establishing is an independent body. It is not a body that is going to be controlled by the Commonwealth. It is not a body where we are asking for final control. It is a body where we are saying that we should remove from the political agenda an assessment of performance hospital by hospital. A vast number of those 29 amendments make clear that it will be more independent from the Commonwealth than the original draft. It is not moving from the Commonwealth to the states but moving from the Commonwealth—for example, the minister having the ability to employ and dismiss the CEO—to giving the board the power to do that. I think that that actually increases the assertion that we have made from the beginning that this is an independent body. It makes it even clearer that we are serious about it being an independent role.

The example that the member for Lyne raised, which is a significant one, goes to some practical objections that the states and territories had about when they are the ones that are required to help improve a hospital facility if it is found to be lacking in performance, which is the very thing that the member raised at the end. What I want them to do if there is a performance problem is get on with fixing it. They asked that they have the opportunity, in a very short time, first to check that the data is correct—and unfortunately in health this has been a problem that has dogged the system, so I think it is not an unreasonable request from people who want to make sure data is correct—and second to be able to get on straightaway with fixing a problem while this process of reporting continues. From my perspective, for the patient that is a good thing. It means that the states are asking for that information to be given to them early so that they can respond and fix performance problems early and so that for patients we have things picked up more quickly.

I can understand that people might have some scepticism. There has been a fair bit of history in a lot of parts of the country where there is not always confidence that the states have done what they ought to in particular areas. What the Commonwealth is interested in doing with our reforms—and this legislation is a big part of it—is making much clearer the lines of responsibility of who does what, who fixes what, how we know when something needs to be fixed and how we make sure the performance is publicly available to people. And we will be. I know as the health minister that every member in this House, if their hospital is found not to be performing properly by this Health Performance Authority, will be in here asking me about what else can be done to fix it. That is how this sort of reporting drives improvements in the system.

So I do not accept the criticisms that are made. I do understand that a number of them are made totally in good faith, but this is a huge leap. It is not an inch further from where we were; it is a huge leap from where we were. I am sure that, over coming years and in the future, people will watch how the performance authority works and may well seek to improve it even further in the future.

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