Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister inform the House what the government is doing to support our public hospitals? Minister, is the government confident that our Australian public hospitals are being well managed? Are there any alternative policies?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bowman for his question. I know how concerned he is to ensure that public hospitals in Queensland at least are being well managed. I can assure him that the federal government is certainly providing ample funding to state public hospitals. Under the current health care agreements we are providing some $42 billion for state run public hospitals. That is a $10 billion increase on the previous five-year period. While we are providing half the money for state public hospitals, we do not play any role in their administration. To the extent that there are problems in our public hospital system, it has very little to do with money and much more to do with consistently poor management.

I can inform the House that the Commonwealth is giving some $14 billion to New South Wales public hospitals, yet in New South Wales public hospitals operations are being cancelled because of leaky roofs. Local charities are being forced to pay for their own thermometers, linen and baby scales. Surgeons at the Royal North Shore hospital in Sydney have been ordered by management to recycle old drills. Waiting lists for elective surgery are 3,000 people longer now than they were 10 years ago. According to today’s Daily Telegraph, the New South Wales health minister is incapable of placing a timely order for a new wheelchair for a terminally ill child.

We are giving some $10 billion to Victoria under the health care agreement. Despite that, some 600 heart operations have been cancelled in the last 12 months in Victorian public hospitals. We are giving $8 billion to Queensland, yet in the last two years no fewer than 1,600 doctors have resigned from Queensland public hospitals because they cannot stand these places as places of work. They are only keeping the emergency department at Caboolture Hospital open by privatising it.

There are a great many problems with the administration of public hospitals in the several states. But, as if running these public hospitals was not hard enough, I can inform the House that administrators in Victoria and Queensland have just discovered a new priority: banning bibles. In Victoria and Queensland, Gideons have now been banned from placing bibles at every hospital bedside, even though this practice has been going on for some five decades. A Royal Melbourne Hospital spokesman was quoted the other day as saying: ‘We don’t have bibles in each room anymore. It is an infection control measure.’ Presumably, the Royal Melbourne Hospital thinks that we should be sworn in in this place in surgical masks and gowns because of the risk of infected bibles. This is not an infection control measure—it is a thought control measure; it is political correctness gone crazy. I say to public hospital administrators in this state: stop worrying about offending people and start running public hospitals properly and give people bibles at a time when they probably most want to see them.