Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009 and to outline some of the concerns that I have both with the nature of this bill and, indeed, with some of the broader subject matter and policies that it encompasses. I say at the outset that, as my colleague Senator Cormann has argued so strongly, this bill is very much a case of the government seeking to put the cart before the horse. This is a case of the government deciding that it is about serving the Public Service and creating a bigger bureaucracy before it actually gets on with talking about policy decisions and policy actions. These are the great disappointments that lie in its decision to introduce this bill in response to an inquiry and a report. That is the only significant response the government has made, and the response is simply to set up an agency—not to consider any of the other substantive recommendations of the report but to swell the ranks of Canberra’s Public Service a little bit more by setting up an agency.

This is one of the many, many reports that this government has commissioned in its two years in office. Report after report has piled up through this time, including in the health portfolio. There are so many reports and reviews and yet there has been so little substantive policy action on the recommendations or findings of the reviews. We see in the health area the classic example. The government promised big before the last election. On public hospitals it promised that it would take over management by July this year—the July that has already passed—if the states had not got their acts together. Of course, that promise has been thrown out the window.

We have seen a review come back to the government on the public hospital system and the health system. They have had their review and it has reported. What have they done in response to that report on the public health system and the many, many recommendations contained within it? They have gone to consultation. We had a review into the public health system and our hospitals, and they have now gone to consultation.