Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill with a few minutes remaining before we adjourn for the evening. The first point I wanted to make is that the Commonwealth does not employ any doctors, does not employ any nurses, does not employ any physiotherapists, does not employ any occupational therapists—indeed, does not employ any health workers. The Commonwealth government does not do that because that is the role of the state governments and of private entities. The state governments have responsibilities for hospitals, the state governments have responsibility for most of the primary health care, and that is where the doctors and the nurses are employed. So one of the reasons why we are abolishing this entity—not the programs, just the entity—is because we do not actually employ any of the doctors and nurses. It is a classic Labor agency, isn't it, a Health Workforce Australia agency supposedly to do all this terrific planning of the health workforce when we do not actually have any health workers employed by the Commonwealth. There are 21 health agencies in the Commonwealth despite not employing any doctors and nurses. This is a sensible measure. Yes, it is to save some money but it also is to make the overall system work more effectively and more efficiently. We have previously debated the abolition of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency and now we are debating the abolition of the Health Workforce Australia agency. We are doing this in order to make the overall system of governance more effective.

The second point I would make is that many of the programs that were being run by Health Workforce Australia are not being abolished overall but are being incorporated into the health department. Why are we doing this? Firstly, so that they can be more effectively executed and in line with other policy which is being implemented by the health department. But, yes, we are doing it in order to make some cost savings. I know that the opposition does not quite realise this, but they left the budgetary finances in a complete and utter mess, so we do need to make some tough decisions in order to bring the budget back into surplus in the medium term. We are prepared to accept that responsibility to do so.

Debate adjourned.

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