Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker has received a letter from the honourable member for Dickson proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s failure to deliver on its commitment to fix public hospitals.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have proposed this matter of public importance today because it is becoming clearer by the day that the Rudd government is walking away from its election commitment made last November to the Australian people that it would fix the public hospital system in this country. There is no more important issue to Australians than having an adequate health system, both a public and private system, properly funded, properly resourced and properly staffed to provide the services that they need, particularly for older Australians. There is a sense of decency inherent in the Australian community which says that they want the government of the day to provide an adequate health system which will meet the needs not just of older Australians but of families of all Australians. This government went to the last election with the commitment that if it did not fix the public hospital system by mid-2009 it would go to the next election asking the Australian people for a referral of the responsibility of management of public hospitals in this country, a commitment that it now seems intent on walking away from.

I have mentioned in the House today that on 22 October this year the Prime Minister, on his website, said under the ‘Fixing our hospitals’ heading:

The Rudd Government is committed to achieving national health care reform in partnership with state and territory governments. However, if significant progress toward the implementation of the reforms has not been achieved by mid-2009, the Government will seek a mandate from the Australian people at the following federal election for the Commonwealth to take financial control of Australia’s 750 public hospitals.

It is specific and express in its intent and, as I understand it, it reflects exactly the Prime Minister’s statement during the election campaign that that was what he would do if the states continued their failure in the management of those public hospital systems. But, if you go to the website of the Prime Minister today, you will not find any reference to that commitment. That is an amazing turnaround by this government, but not a surprising one. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I asked a question in this place of the Deputy Prime Minister, then Acting Prime Minister, as to whether or not the Rudd government would stand by their commitment to go to a referendum at the 2010 election, or earlier if the election were called earlier, to ask the Australian people for that mandate. At that stage—suspiciously, I thought at the time—she squibbed that question, but nonetheless it is now understandable why she did. If you go to the website of the Prime Minister of Australia as at 2 December 2008, there is no reference. There is talk about improving our hospitals but no longer about fixing our hospitals. The headline on 22 October was ‘Fixing our hospitals’; now they are only improving our hospitals.

People might say: ‘What does that mean? What’s the difference?’ If you know this Prime Minister and the work of this government then you will understand exactly the significance of the changing of the wording and the moving away from that original statement that it would ask the Australian public for a mandate to take over public hospitals. It is because this government is all spin and no substance. This is a government which is intent on finding weasel words to come up with a way in which it can find its way through a political issue. It has focus groups working 24/7. That is who is working 24/7 in the Rudd government: it is the focus groups. The focus group organisers get out there, talking to groups that they bring together and pay money to, and they say, ‘Let me put this statement to you: the Prime Minister of Australia is indecisive.’ The groups say: ‘Yes, I think he’s indecisive. I think he’s not doing what he said he would at the last election.’ It is amazing, because then the focus group organiser comes out and says: ‘What would make you say the Prime Minister was decisive? What if the Prime Minister got up and said, “I’m going to act decisively, and I’ll make a decisive decision, and decisively I’ll decide that this decision will be carried out by the decisive Rudd government.”‘ And the group says, ‘I would find that decisive.’

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order on relevance. Only four minutes in, it seems the member for Dickson has nothing more to say about health. He should be brought to the topic.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, there is no point of order.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have ‘Reba’ Roxon there trying to run down the clock, but those sorts of premature interruptions are not going to work. The focus groups say, ‘If the Prime Minister said something along these lines—if he acts decisively and says that he is going to make a decisive decision that is in the decisive interests of this country—then we’ll think he’s decisive.’ So what happens? Kevin Rudd trots out the next morning, he does an AM slot, he talks to the newspapers, he does a doorstop and he declares that the Rudd government is going to act decisively in relation to a particular measure. He has done it this time in relation to health. I can tell you that there is no better example of the way in which this government is driven by media spin and not by substance than in the area of health, because all we have seen since the COAG announcements over the weekend is the exact focus-group-driven outcomes and public statements by this Prime Minister. But at the end of the day they mean nothing because he has no intention of carrying out his election commitments. That is why it is important to recognise that this subtle change in the words put on the Prime Minister’s website now gives him the wriggle room to move away from his election commitment that he would fix public hospitals.

There is another statement that this Prime Minister went to the last election with: that he was going to end the blame game. He said, ‘I’m going to end the blame game,’ and, when Australians turned on their TVs and heard him saying that, they thought that what he meant was that he was going to end the blame game to allow him to fix the public hospitals, because Australians knew that state Labor, for the last 10 years or more, had run public hospitals into the ground. So when they heard the Prime Minister, as then opposition leader, saying, ‘I’ll end the blame game; I’ll fix the hospitals,’ they gave him a big tick. They thought, ‘That’s great.’ They thought the end of the waiting list was in sight. They thought that it might now be easier to get in to their GPs or put their aged parents into an aged-care nursing home. They thought this bloke was genuine about fixing the public hospital system. Fast forward 12 months to the end of 2008—we have just marked the first anniversary of the Rudd government—and what has the Rudd government done in relation to health? A big, fat zero.

This is a government that has spent the last 12 months using the words ‘the end of the blame game’; this is, do not forget, the wordsmith Prime Minister. ‘The end of the blame game’, which he used as a slogan during the campaign, has over the last 12 months been political cover for him to become complicit with these state governments in doing nothing—nothing at all—to fix the public hospital system in this country. We had a great, grand media statement from the Prime Minister and the premiers at the COAG conference on Saturday. They came up with this huge sum, which some people could not even comprehend, as the amount of money that they were going to spend on health, but when you look at the detail and scratch below the surface of the press conference you start to worry about what it is they are actually promising.

Let me deal with a couple of issues in relation to the COAG process. When we were in government, we increased spending in relation to health overall, in real terms, by 88 per cent. The total investment in the health and ageing portfolio when we came to government in 1995-96 was $19.5 billion. In 2007-08, under the coalition government, it was $51.8 billion, a real increase of 88 per cent. In terms of Medicare funding, when the Labor Party were in government in 1995-96 they spent $6 billion—

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell us about public hospitals.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and the coalition spent $12.5 billion, a real increase of 48 per cent. The soon-to-be-retired member for Banks, somewhat past it in this place, occasionally forgets to take his medication and comes in here with increasingly incomprehensible interjections about hospital funding and the healthcare agreements. In 1993-95 the Labor Party committed $23 billion to the healthcare agreement. When we were last in government, for the period 2003-05 the healthcare agreement went to $42 billion.

We would have put together a very similar package in dollar terms to that which the Labor government announced on the weekend. There is no question about that. There is no reform; there is no revolution that has taken place in health over the last 12 months—just more of the same from this spin-over-substance government. So let us deal with the reality. The reality is that this coalition, had it been in government at this time, would have committed about the same amount of money to this healthcare agreement period as that which was announced by the government. So the policy from a coalition government would have been of the same quantum as has been announced by the federal Labor Party, but the stark difference would have been in relation to the outcomes that are required to be delivered by state governments.

This is a very important point, because this coalition government was determined to get better patient outcomes for all Australians. We wanted to make sure that more people got into public hospitals and more people moved up the waiting lists as quickly as possible. We did not want to see them becoming stale on these public hospital system waiting lists that have been run up over 10 years of state Labor. What I am most concerned about is that, certainly at the moment, this is good money following bad. There is no sense in the Commonwealth throwing good money after bad into a failed state Labor hospital management system.

We want to make sure that you commit the funding but also that you deliver the outcomes to patients; we want to make sure that people in hospitals around the country can receive the sorts of services that nurses, doctors and public hospital officials want to deliver to their patients. The people who work in our hospitals, be they public or private, around the country want good outcomes for Australian patients. They have the same outlook that the federal coalition have. We have committed to providing the funding but we want proper outcomes. We are worried that this is a government, that this is a minister, which is intent on hiding the failings of state Labor governments over the next 10 years as they tried to do over the last 10. The point is, if we do not correct the hospital management practices of people like Reba Meagher in New South Wales and people like Stephen Robertson in Queensland, then we consign ourselves to 10 more years of failed practices in public hospitals.

I mention Reba Meagher not by mistake but because she has become some sort of demigod to the federal Minister for Health and Ageing. Now, ‘Reba’ Roxon, as many people now refer to the current health minister, has presided over a couple of decisions in 12 short months. The first decision was to rip 500,000 people out of the private health system and force them into the public health system. What possible sense could this make? If you had fixed the public hospital system then fair enough—you could move patients; you could transfer patients from the private system into the public system. That is fair enough. But if you have a government that has been complicit with the state Labor governments over the last 10 years in not fixing public hospitals, in not fixing public waiting lists, then why on earth would you force those people onto the public hospital waiting lists to make an overstretched system even worse?

That was the first major health decision by this government in their first 12 months. That was their first and major decision in relation to health—to force 500,000 people into an already stretched public health system. The second and most significant outcome, it seems, from this particular health minister in her first year in office is that she joined and signed up to the Kevin Rudd spin-over-substance policy in relation to health, and that is what will condemn us to bad outcomes. This is a government that when in opposition, as I say, promised big outcomes. In fact, this is a Prime Minister who said on 25 February this year:

… it’s no point just tinkering with the system. We’ve actually got to look at this root and branch, and do it thoroughly …

This was the Prime Minister of the country talking about the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, which is due to report back in June of next year. That is what he talked about in terms of their revolution. Now they have locked in five years of health funding into the out years and they have essentially condemned Christine Bennett’s review to complete irrelevance. And this is the government which has not committed, under the COAG process—which has a five-year horizon—to any imagination whatsoever. This is about providing more money to state governments and not providing health outcomes.

This is the big difference that the Australian people will have at the next election. This is a government that when in opposition promised lots of spin and now they are in government have delivered no substance, while this is a coalition that remains committed to the health system of this country, not just in the private sector but also in public hospitals. We on this side of the House want to make sure that we continue to deliver better health outcomes for all Australians into the 21st century, something that this government, when they adopt the hospital and management practices of their state counterparts, will completely fail to do over the next two years. This is a coalition which will deliver on health, and this is a government which has been condemned by its first 12 months for providing no health outcomes for Australians. (Time expired)

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

Peter, Peter, Peter! That was absolutely the most pathetic display. The shadow minister had 15 minutes to set out some plan, some vision, for the coalition; to argue on a substantive point about why $64.8 billion going into our health system is a bad idea; to stand up and say that he does not want the new doctors that we have promised who are going to be trained in his electorate; to stand up and say that he does not want the teenagers in his electorate to get their first preventative health check ever—paid for by the Commonwealth, $150 per teenager; or to stand up and say that increasing the numbers of new nurses being trained through our universities and going into our hospitals is something that, if only the coalition had been given more time, they would finally have gotten around to. This is the most pathetic excuse for a debate about public hospitals. Fresh from an agreement on Saturday through which we are investing billions and billions of dollars into our public hospitals, the shadow minister for health expects to be taken seriously when he stands up and says that in 12 months nothing has been done in health.

I seem to recall that, in addition to the list that I have already gone through, we did not hear anything from those opposite when we proposed to put $600 million into elective surgery. The shadow minister has not been brave enough to stand up and say that those 27,000 people who have had surgery done because of an extra investment made by the Commonwealth, complemented by state effort, is something that they do not support. They never put a single dollar into elective surgery but, somehow, what we have done in 12 months to help improve those waiting lists just does not count for anything.

This shadow minister is not going to be taken seriously if in a debate about the serious matter of investing in our public hospitals he cannot even speak for more than four minutes before he has to get off the topic of health. He spent most of the time on spin and talking about a whole range of other issues. I am surprised he did not put in a bit about economics because he is clearly trying to change jobs to get the deputy leader’s position; he would like to be the shadow Treasurer.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Was that an audition?

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

If that was an audition, he could have at least done one or the other well. He could have at least put up a credible economic argument about something, which he did not do, if it was his job application for the shadow Treasurer, or he could have been serious about the investments in public hospitals. But he has done neither of those. To add insult to injury, this shadow minister for health thinks it is a joke to make a comment to an interjection that a member should go and take his medication. As the shadow minister for health, that is a pretty irresponsible, offhand comment to make. I do not really think that the shadow minister is doing himself or the issue any credit by making those sorts of offhand comments if he really wants to be taken seriously, or if he aspires longer term to be the minister for health. But it seems he already has his eyes set elsewhere.

The other thing that was particularly breathtaking, I am sure, for those on this side of the House was that the shadow minister said that this was a really bad COAG deal, that we do not really want all this money on health and it is all just going to be wasted. Then he said, ‘If we were in government we would have put together this package as well, so do not give them any credit.’ It does not make any sense at all—the fact that they did not put that money in for the 12 years that they were there, the fact that they ripped money out and now, somehow, 12 months later, we should believe that the shadow minister, the then assistant Treasurer, had written on an envelope somewhere the amount of money that he was going to put into health, if he only got the chance at the next election. The community does not believe you. You ripped money out of public hospitals. Why should we believe you that you set aside some amount of money that you were going to put in when it is only us that have actually delivered on that?

He also does not understand the previous health agreements. He stands up and says, ‘This is throwing good money after bad.’ I challenge him to go and find any emergency department around the country where they say that putting $750 million extra into emergency departments is throwing good money after bad. We are actually making sure that we provide relief to those emergency departments. But he pretends that the old healthcare agreements were outcomes focused, when in fact it was only the negotiation of this agreement that is putting outcomes in focus for the first time. I think the shadow minister is revealing that he does not understand the detail of this, he does not know what was in the previous agreements, he is not prepared to acknowledge that this is the biggest ever investment that has been made in a number of areas—Indigenous health, preventative health, workforce reform—and, instead, he stands up and just bags it all.

The other thing about the shadow minister—and I think the member for Banks might have provoked the bizarre interjection from the shadow minister—is that we on this side of the House, just celebrating our 12 month anniversary in government, are accused of having been complicit with the states in running down our public hospitals for the last decade. I had to think about that for a moment. I seem to remember that actually it was the coalition in government draining money out of our public system. Somewhat bizarrely, he accuses us, after all those years in opposition arguing for more investment in health, of being complicit in running down our health system. Nobody is going to be able to believe that, Shadow Minister, and if you are serious about fixing our hospitals, you would actually be debating with us what good news there was in the COAG agreement, and congratulating us for putting outcomes in that are about driving health outcomes, improving quality, improving throughput and making sure access is better. He says that nothing has been done when, for example, we are already increasing GP places across the country We are going to have 250 extra GP places across the country after a cap, cruelly put in place by the previous government, meant that young graduating doctors wanting to go into general practice were going to be turned away even though most of us suffer from doctor shortages in our electorates. They did nothing about it. He cannot stand up and say that is a good idea.

On hospital reform, the package deals with workforce—an area neglected by the previous government for more than a decade. The previous government had a blind spot when it came to workforce. It is the single biggest capacity constraint in the system and we are investing, in our first year of government, in a deal that delivers $1.1 billion to the workforce to make sure that as the system expands, as the demands of the community grow, we will have the doctors and nurses, physios, dieticians and others ready to treat people. How can this be an argument? How can he suggest this is the position of a government that is neglecting health? It just does not stack up.

We are putting money into subacute care to provide for elderly people who stay in hospital too long because there is nowhere for them to go—no transition care, no step-down care and no aged-care bed. Of course, our election commitments that we are already delivering on in terms of extra aged-care places are rolling out. But in the interim we also need to make sure that there are other types of care available. So we have allocated $500 million to support an extra 1,600 subacute beds, which will increase capacity, I understand, by five per cent per year for four years. This is a big difference in terms of what we will be able to do in our public hospitals.

We put money in for accountability and making sure transparency exists. The shadow minister says that there is nothing in this for the public and that he does not see where the money is going to go. For the first time, we are negotiating reporting standards for the states and territories, whom, contrary to the member’s assertions, we do not always agree with. But we do not think there is any need to finger-point if you are not prepared to work with them to try to improve the system. That is what we are doing. Of course we are going to keep pressure on them and we are going to keep pressure on ourselves to make sure that we are doing better in community care and in the sectors that we are responsible for. This agreement delivers on that.

I have already mentioned preventative health, the way you take pressure off hospitals, we have talked about Indigenous health and we are putting money into e-health. All of these are good-news stories about our health system and are areas that were neglected by the previous government. The shadow minister started his speech with this big song and dance about how we had changed our position because he could not find on the Prime Minister’s website the details about election commitments that we remain committed to. In fact in health we had, I think, 85 different election commitments. Each and every one of those is being delivered on. From additional estimates in February, after we were first elected, to the budget, they are being delivered.

We have been entirely consistent—the Prime Minister, all of my cabinet colleagues and me—in saying that we, in the middle of next year, will make an assessment of whether the states and territories are moving towards the reforms that are needed to fix our hospital system. We have not been in any way secretive, tricky or sneaky—the sort of standards that the previous government always applied—we just stood up and said, ‘In the middle of next year we will see how things are going. We will look at the report from the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. We will see how the states are travelling in delivering outcomes that we are giving them money for.’ The agreement on Saturday was a big step towards signalling that we want to work with the states and territories and that they want to work with us to improve standards, but we remain committed to making a decision, after looking at the situation, in the middle of next year when we have received the report from Dr Bennett and her Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.

Again, the shadow minister cannot even be consistent on that. The opposition stand up and say that we are all about reviews and ask why we do not do things more quickly. We deliver a $64.8 billion package in health on the weekend and then they say, ‘Why don’t you wait for the review,’ because we are locking out their assessment. The shadow minister cannot have it both ways. In fact we believe that you can do two things at once: we believe that you can invest in our hospital system now and you can plan for the future and be prepared to reform in the future. The opposition do not get it. The shadow minister is not concentrating on his job because he is busily out there trying to undermine the member for Curtin—trying to show off his economic standards and credibility. He is not focusing on what has been delivered in the health system.

I did not hear the shadow minister stand up and talk about the state-by-state breakdowns of the investment that we are making following the agreement at COAG, but I thought that some of my colleagues over on this side of the House might be interested to hear about this. I can see the member for Dawson, the member for Petrie and a number of Queenslanders here. More than $12 billion extra is going into the Queensland health system. I see my colleague the parliamentary secretary in the chamber. Over $15 billion is going into Victoria. I can see the member for Blaxland, the member for Banks and others from New South Wales here. Over $20 billion is going to New South Wales to invest in their hospitals, their workforce and the health of their community. In South Australia about $5 billion is going into the health system. There will be $1.4 billion for Tasmania, and I am sure the member for Franklin and the member for Bass will be pleased about that. Nearly $900 million will be invested here in the ACT and well over half a billion dollars in the Northern Territory. I have not seen anybody stand up and say that they do not want that money invested in their system. We have two Queenslanders sitting here at the table opposite me. Do you truly want us to use that $12 billion for something else and not put it into Queensland?

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ciobo interjecting

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

The member for Moncrieff is returning to form—he wants to talk about the problems. We know there are problems, but the previous government never wanted to fix them. They never wanted to improve the system and work to fix it. Here we are investing more money in the system and these guys opposite want to have it both ways. This is interesting because the shadow spokesperson for finance, the member for North Sydney, said during question time that it is not about money—that money does not matter. Believe me, in health it is not just about money, but money does matter. You have to use money to drive change. You have to use money to invest and deliver on reforms. That is exactly what we have been doing—it is what we have been doing in the first 12 months and it is what we intend to keep doing. I think it is extraordinary that we have a shadow minister for health who has not got anything better to say when we have been delivering so much.

Let us just go back over the last 12 months—tomorrow it will be 12 months since we were sworn in—and look at what has been delivered. Even leaving aside the massive COAG agreement on the weekend, we immediately put $1 billion into our public hospitals; and now we have $68.4 billion going in. We put in $600 million to slash elective surgery waiting lists, as I said. There have been 27,000 procedures already delivered—2,000 extra, three months ahead of schedule. There is the Teen Dental Plan, where we have thousands of teenagers across the country getting their preventative checks early and making sure they have good oral health. We have established the new health checks for kids—for four-year-olds before they start school. This has been very popular with parents. It is a very good idea to check that everything is in order so that when kids get to school they are ready to learn and they do not have problems with their sight, their hearing or other issues that have gone undetected.

There are more than 1,000 extra university places in nursing. The shadow minister does not think that extra nurses are important—obviously he does not understand that they are the backbone of the system. There are ultimately an extra 250 GP places ongoing from 2011—75 more next year, 100 the year after, and 250 a year from then on; some are going into Aboriginal medical services. We have seen our anti binge drinking strategy hit the airwaves. We have our local programs out, we have advertising and we are already seeing young people saying that these ads are shocking them into being more careful. These are the sorts of initiatives that we are proud we have delivered on. But the shadow minister stands up and says that we have done nothing, that they do not want money in the system and that they just want to attack the states. It is a case of the same old, same old. I keep waiting for more information. I keep waiting and waiting. I feel like I am ‘waiting for Dutto’, I tell you—just waiting for nothing. (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the matter of public importance before the House, and in doing so I seek to highlight the government’s failure to manage the budget and the impact this is having on its commitment to fix public hospitals and the health system, particularly as it affects Gippsland and other parts of regional Australia. As the minister has just mentioned, last week we marked the first anniversary of the Rudd government—and it is a bit of a pity because if the people of Australia had a 12-month warranty on the government then they would want their money back. I do not pay much attention to the newspaper polls, but I do listen to the people in my own electorate who tell me that families are worse off now than they were 12 months ago. There are many angry people out there who would cash in a 12-month warranty card on the government if they had it—they would ask for their money back, if only they could. They would happily change their vote if only they had that chance as well.

There have been three by-elections this year and the only time the government had the courage to turn up, in the Gippsland by-election, there was a swing of six per cent against Labor. The people of Gippsland took their first opportunity to cash in their warranty. I believe it will happen again, because the people of Australia have not got what they voted for. Normally when you buy a dud product you get to send it back. I do not blame the people of Australia, because they were subjected very much to union backed advertising—a slick marketing campaign—but they did not get what they voted for.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why don’t you shave off your moustache?

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the member picks up on my moustache, because I have to accept that probably the only thing in this place uglier than my moustache is the ugly set of budget numbers that the Treasurer has presided over in just 12 months. My ugly moustache will go away, but the problems associated with the public hospital system will remain as long as we have Labor governments and as long as we have state Labor parties running them into the ground.

As I said, I do not blame the people of Australia for the choice they made 12 months ago. They were subjected to a barrage of union backed advertising and a slick marketing campaign. But they simply did not get what they voted for. They were promised a better public health system. And they were promised an economic conservative. How many times did we hear that in the lead-up to the 2007 election? From the Prime Minister himself, on 23 November on the AM program, we heard:

Economic conservative means a fundamental belief in budget surpluses.

And on 8 November on The Today Show he said:

When it comes to the detail of Labor’s policy, the core of it and why I’m an economic conservative is to ensure that we have budget surpluses.

There is a lot more, as we have found, to running a government than these 24-hour news cycle and glib one-liners we had from the Prime Minister. We are rapidly finding out that there is very little substance backing up the Labor spin. The member for Dickson referred before to the obsession with the focus groups. Last week we had the Prime Minister referring to the ‘national project’—whatever the national project may be—but I am sure it will get another run in the months ahead.

And whatever happened to the Prime Minister’s promise, when it comes to public hospitals, that the buck stops here? Actually, given the Prime Minister’s extensive travel schedule it is no wonder the buck does not stop any more; it is probably the peso, the yen or maybe even the euro that now stops here. We have already heard the shadow minister’s contribution about the post-election editing of the Prime Minister’s website. Whatever did happen to that commitment to fix public hospitals or else seek a mandate to a Commonwealth takeover of state responsibilities? What happened is that Labor got elected and found out that it is actually a lot tougher running government than they thought—and to secure our economy and to deliver a better health service for all Australians. So instead of the decisive action that we have heard so much about we have seen a continuation of the blame game and desperate attempts by Labor administrations to patch up the mess of their state Labor colleagues. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our public hospital system.

We have also seen the changes to the Medicare levy threshold, which Access Economics has forecast will result in up to one million Australians dropping out of private health cover by 2012. That is a real act of genius at a time when we have public hospital waiting lists completely under pressure! Now we are going to add more pressure to the system, with people dropping out of private health cover.

The various state Labor administrations are still failing miserably to deliver the promised services. We can look forward to longer waiting lists in already stressed public hospitals. I would like to refer briefly to my own electorate, where Latrobe Regional Hospital is located between Traralgon and Morwell. After nine long years of state Labor administration the latest Your Hospitals report has confirmed everything that the community has been saying to us for the past three or four years. The report found that one in three Latrobe Regional Hospital patients were forced to wait over eight hours for a bed after being admitted to the emergency department. It also found that the waiting list soared from 812 to 1,590 in just 12 months. I am not blaming the staff for a second. They are doing a magnificent job in extremely difficult circumstances, but earlier this year Latrobe Regional Hospital ran out of money completely and cancelled all elective surgery before the end of the financial year. They simply told people to come back in a couple of months. ‘We haven’t got the funding to fix your knee, your shoulder, or whatever it might be.’ People were being left in pain because of an economic time frame that was set by the state Labor government, and it was all back to business at the start of the next financial year.

Is it any wonder that Dr George Owen, a highly respected orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital spoke out in the media and told the Latrobe Valley Express newspaper, at the height of the crisis:

Patients are currently booked in good faith with the bookings accepted by the hospital, but now on a daily basis cases are being cancelled.

Patients were simply being told to come back later. It is simply not good enough for us in Latrobe Valley or anywhere else in regional Australia.

I do stress that the men and women at the coalface are not the ones to blame in this mess. They are caught up in the state Labor administrations and their failure to properly administer our health systems. Of course, it is not a situation that is unique to Gippsland. We have heard the member for Parkes already speaking in this House on many occasions, and he asked a question in question time a month or so ago to bring the attention of the House to the situation of the Greater Western Area Health Service, where meat supplies were cut to a number of hospitals and vital medical supplies were paid for by staff out of their own pockets. It is an appalling situation, and the people of regional New South Wales and all of regional Australia deserve better than they are getting from their Labor members of parliament. In mid-October it was estimated that the health services in the greater western area could be in debt to the tune of up to $66 million.

Now that the government ministers have finally mentioned the D-word, my concern is how this will impact on the government’s promises in relation to health spending going forward, particularly as it relates to regional areas. I fear that the forecast budget surplus will never eventuate and that we are on track, now, for a series of deficits, one after another.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Temporary deficits!

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes! The health and wellbeing of regional Australians will be affected as this government fails to keep its promises to invest in the promised health infrastructure and service delivery throughout regional areas.

One of the biggest preventative health issues in our nation is ensuring that all Australians have the decency of a job. The ability to be gainfully employed has a flow-on benefit to all aspects of family health and wellbeing. Those opposite continue to come in here and parrot their key messages—their key lines from the focus groups—about ‘working families’, but I fear that in 2009 we are going to hear a lot more about ‘out-of-work families’. They will not be working families any more; we will be hearing about out-of-work families.

One of the great legacies of the former government was the number of jobs it was able to assist in creating in a quite buoyant economy. As we move into 2009, the forecast of further growth in unemployment is going to start hurting families across Australia. And the forecast budget surplus has already gone. There will be no further opportunities to draw down on the good work of the previous government for public hospitals or for anything else. As the Leader of the Opposition correctly warned last week, when he was speaking in the House, experience and history tell us that Labor deficits are never temporary.

Deputy Speaker, it gives me no pleasure—I take no relish in standing here today—in criticising the government for its failure to manage Australia’s budget and deliver the promised improvements to the public hospital system. I am a person who believes in outcomes and, as a member of the Nationals, my main concern is with everyday Australians in rural, regional and coastal communities. They are my No. 1 focus. They have the right to a quality health service; it is a fundamental right for all Australians. It gives me no pleasure at all to stand here and talk about the administration of hospitals being run down over the past decade of state Labor administrations. As I said, I believe that providing quality health services is a fundamental right for all Australians, regardless of their postcodes. I accept it is an enormous challenge for the government of the day. But, as we have seen repeatedly, the state Labor administrations are simply not up to the job.

The Prime Minister made a lot of promises prior to the federal election about where the buck stops, but you simply do not treat patients with empty rhetoric. Some of the empty words from the Prime Minister were:

I have a long-term plan to fix our nation’s hospitals. I will be responsible for implementing my plan, and I state this with absolute clarity: the buck will stop with me.

As I mentioned before, it is more likely to be the peso or the yen that will stop with the Prime Minister these days. We all accept that times are tough, but being in government is all about making the hard decisions. I have only been here for a short time but I have already learnt that when it comes to the Labor Party there is always someone else to blame. If it is not the previous government, it is the global financial crisis. They bleat about it continually. If it is not their fault, they blame the state governments or they go to the previous administration, the coalition government, despite the fact they were handed a surplus in excess of $20 billion. The people of Australia are worse off today than they were 12 months ago, and I fear the worst is yet to come. (Time expired)

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the matter of public importance proposed by the member for Dickson in the following terms:

The Government’s failure to deliver on its commitment to fix public hospitals.

I do not mind copping a belting if we have done something wrong, but what I will not cop is hypocrisy of the highest order from those on the other side. At the outset, I want to address a few things said by the member for Dickson. He talked about focus groups. The other night I watched the third episode of The Howard Years. The previous week I watched the second episode, and who featured prominently? Mark Textor, the prominent pollster that the Liberal Party used for 11½ years. Of course, everything was scripted to focus groups and polling. The former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, was a perfectionist when it came to that sort of stuff. So I will not have that levelled at us when we had 11½ years of it. In the end, not even Mr Textor could save the former government. Arthur Sinodinos talked about a train coming at Mr Howard. Not only did it come at him; it cleaned him up.

The member for Dickson talked about my pending retirement, whenever that might be. I will tell you the difference between the member for Dickson and me. When I leave this place it will be at a time of my own choosing. When the member for Dickson leaves it will be his electorate throwing him out, like they threw Mr Howard out of Bennelong at the last election. The interesting thing is that on election night we thought that the member for Dickson was in a bit of trouble. He fell over the line. I think the member for Curtin and Deputy Leader of the Opposition is probably one of those people who wishes that what we thought at election time had actually transpired, given what is happening.

When it comes to public hospitals, the hypocrisy of it! The former government bled public hospitals over 11½ years. I will give you some figures. They are not my figures; they are figures relating to the Australian Health Care Agreement in 2003. In the portfolio budget statement of 2003-04, under the Health and Ageing portfolio on page 106, this is what happens—

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Was this when the government was in surplus?

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, under your government. It says: in 2003-04, $108.9 million was taken out of the system; in 2004-05, $172 million was taken out of the system; in 2005-06, $264.6 million was taken out of the system; in 2006-07, $372.9 million was taken out of the system. That is why the state and territory premiers and chief ministers were complaining and claiming that about a billion dollars had been cut from the agreement in terms of the forward estimates as far as 2003 was concerned. So let’s not cop this hypocrisy coming at us from the other side.

What does the recent COAG agreement show? Glenn Milne, who reported on it, obviously off the back of the Prime Minister’s press release, said that there was a $64.4 billion boost to health and hospital funding, driving reform through the national healthcare agreement—an  increase of more than $20 billion, or 50 per cent, over the last agreement. What it will also do is deliver significant reforms for stringent accountability measures, performance reporting and rewards for meetings in terms of setting targets. So there are actually incentives there. This is something you had an opportunity to do. You did not do any of that in the 11½ years you were in government. You handed over money without benchmarks, without requirements, and you criticise us! What did we do at our first opportunity in relation to a COAG agreement? We increased the funding. That is funding with an annual indexation rate of about 7.3 per cent, which is a growth rate—it is not a cut; it is not smoke and mirrors. These are figures that have been accepted by everyone in the industry, and we have the opposition coming in here and trying to say we have not done anything.

The total is $64.4 billion and $4.8 billion is for public hospitals. That is the one thing that the member for Dickson attacks us over: fixing public hospitals. I will tell you what: sadly for this nation, it will take more than 12 months to fix up the mess that you left after 11½ years. It does take time to repair damage. You have to get people back into the system. What are we doing? There is $1.1 billion to train more doctors, nurses and other health professionals, and $750 million to take pressure off emergency departments. And you have got the hide to come in here and try and criticise us! This is why the member for Dickson has got no hope against the member for Curtin: it is the sublime and the ridiculous. He comes in here and tries to argue that black is white. Where has he produced the figures? Instead, he rails against me because he has got a bit of an obsession against me, because I happen to have been a legal aid lawyer before I came into parliament and he was a policeman—I say no more. There is $500 million for measures to provide additional subacute care, $450 million for preventative health national partnerships and $800 million for Indigenous health.

I go back to the original figure: an extra $4.8 billion for public hospitals. That is what the MPI is about. Refute it. Tell us it is not in there. No-one has said that the figure is illusory; it is real money, it is real dollars. And the rest of the agreement relates to performance. Of course you pay on performance. Do I trust the states? Absolutely not! My history in this place is one of a centralist. My cooperation with states is to force them on benchmarks. When I was the shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs, I supported the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs at the time, John Herron, when he wanted to bring in benchmarks on the states and territories in relation to Indigenous matters because money went missing. I do not make any apology for the fact that I totally support what happened at COAG. I do not mind the states coming and asking us for extra money, and I think we should give it to them based on their need, based on their performance, based on proper delivery of services. But to cop this garbage of an MPI that asserts that somehow this government, which has a commitment not only to public hospitals but also to Medicare, is somehow errant in its first 12 months—give us a break! No-one can take you seriously.

Pay on performance? Members opposite are very lucky there was no productivity performance on themselves in the last 12 months! I have to say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, they are still grieving. They do not know why they lost the last election. I will tell them why they lost. They lost all right because they did not deliver on the health system, on education. People who voted for them, blue-collar workers, were rewarded with Work Choices! Anyone with half a brain who worked the electorate at the last election picked all that stuff up. But I will tell you who the public trusts on public hospitals—Labor. Not the Liberal-National Party because of their obsession with private hospitals and private health. It is only Labor that has had the commitment to public health and public hospitals. So it is a nice, cute little trick for the opposition in bringing these MPIs forward. It will get them nowhere. This is a wasted MPI. It is irrelevant, and the people are saying that because those opposite are not on the money. In this instance, it is an affront that their tactics group would allow such a subject to come up as an MPI. Come on; make it a bit harder for us! This is easy. I would have had no trouble convincing a jury on this; they would have come back in less than 20 minutes!

The state-by-state breakdown is $20 billion for New South Wales, $15 billion for Victoria, $12 billion for Queensland, $6 billion for Western Australia, $5 billion for South Australia, $1.4 billion for Tasmania, $900 million for the ACT and well over $½ billion for the Northern Territory. What happened is that the Prime Minister did not play games at COAG, whereas the former Prime Minister used to play one state off against the next. There is no doubt that Queensland did a lot better than others because that is where a swag of conservative seats were, but I predict we will pick up a few more at the next election there. So that will be an interesting exercise.

It was a delight to be asked by the Chief Government Whip to speak on this MPI because it is a very easy MPI in which to defend the government’s record. Those who come in here to try to rail against us, frankly, are firing blanks. There is nothing in what they are saying. The record does speak for itself. We have a commitment to public hospitals. We will have a commitment in the long term as well. (Time expired)

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How could I possibly follow that? Madam Deputy Speaker, I mourn the day when we lose the member for Banks, when a faction finally rolls in at the next election and he is gone through one of the factions—when the member for Blaxland or one of the other factional bosses decides to get rid of him. I mourn that day because that was quite an extraordinary speech. He basically said (1) we should abolish the states and (2) Queensland did better than all of the states from the funding over the past 10 years and that they should not have. So he has bagged Queensland. It was quite an extraordinary speech. He also mentioned an interesting year. He mentioned 2003-04 in relation to health funding. It is a very consistent year. I believe, and I stand to be corrected, that is the year we finally paid off Labor’s debt. I am pretty sure that is when we paid off Labor’s debt—$96 billion of debt, Member for Banks.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then why did you cut $1 billion out of hospitals? You didn’t need to!

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We had $10 billion in interest payments that we did not have to pay anymore when we finally paid off the debt that those opposite left us. When we finally paid off the debt of a predecessor of the member for Blaxland, we could finally start investing that $10 billion. And the amount of money that is being ushered out to Australian families in the next couple of weeks is coincidentally $10.4 billion—exactly the same amount as we were paying in interest each year. So, if you are talking about 2003-04, we are talking about economic credibility.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you auditioning for Julie’s job?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen the Labor Party use language very cleverly in changing key commitments from the last election. Of course, last year we had the fiscal conservative. We saw in the ads that he was a fiscal conservative. He was Kevin from Queensland and he was there to save your money. He told us he was a fiscal conservative, but last week he slowly dropped into a ministerial statement that he just might have a temporary deficit this year and it might just last around an economic cycle, which could be a period of unknown years. He added ‘a temporary deficit’ into the Hansard last week. So we started to prepare the public. We talk about spin doctors. Mr Textor was raised in that speech. Labor loves to whip Tex. Poor Tex! He has been accused of all sorts of crimes. But, truth be told, this is the most poll driven government in the history of the Commonwealth. We see that every day in this place. Thankfully, I have had some research given to me in the last little while in preparation for this health MPI.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does it come from a focus group?

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does not come from a focus group, Member for Wakefield; it comes from a dedicated researcher in the opposition and they have been working very hard. What it shows me is that in January this year we had one mention of the word ‘decisive’ from those on the other side. In October this year that blew out to 156 mentions of ‘decisive’. I even have it in graph form for the members on the other side to see. We had ‘decisive’ once in January but 156 times in October. It dropped off in November—they did not meet their benchmarks and their pollster would not be happy. It was 111 in November, and so far in the one and a half sitting days of December we have had five mentions.

I am honoured by the presence of the Prime Minister, who, of course, promised us last year in relation to health that the buck would stop with him. We have seen today that he is moving away from that promise. We have seen the removal from the website of the language about the buck stopping with him. That is very consistent with the strategy of last week of dropping in a mention of the fact that there will be a temporary deficit. Now we have changed our minds about the buck stopping with Labor—we have changed our minds on this one as well because we know we just cannot do it. We just cannot clean up the mess that the state governments have created on this issue.

Let us not divert the blame here. The state governments are wholly and solely responsible for public health and they have not done the right thing by this system in the last 10 years. They have destroyed the system. The Prime Minister has entered the House. He should tell this House that the buck still stops with him when it comes to health. He can use the word ‘decisive’ and boost the numbers if he likes. We have five so far in December; we have a target of 157 to create the record for the year. It is going to be tough in December because we do not have as many sitting days. But, if the truth be told, this government is the most spin doctored government in the history of the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister is the most spin related Prime Minister in the history of this Commonwealth. He has no substance to him, which is a great pity for the Australian people. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.