Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I would like to talk to the Commonwealth Grants Commission Report on GST revenue sharing relativities: 2010 review. I welcome the report because it recognises that, over many years, New South Wales and Victoria have shared the cost of equalisation, while other states and the Northern Territory were below the average. I particularly welcome New South Wales’s share of revenue being increased from 30.2 per cent to 30.7 per cent. In this context, I think it is important that GST revenue be used efficiently and productively.

In dealing with revenue efficiently and productively, nothing could be more important than the government’s Better Health, Better Hospitals policy, which is vitally important to economic growth and building a better society. This is part of the government’s ongoing decisive action to make sure that we have better hospitals and better health policy—something that the opposition failed to deal with in 11½ years of government. This government has taken decisive action to underpin 210,000 jobs in the face of the global financial crisis. We have done that through the fiscal stimulus. And we also want to take decisive action to build a better hospital system. We want to build a new, national health and hospital network—better health and better hospitals—something that the coalition government in their period under John Howard and Peter Costello never had either the intellectual capacity or the energy to deal with. That is the reality in terms of where we are.

We want a system that is funded nationally and run locally. It is about delivering on the basics for the Australian public. It is about empowering local doctors and nurses to make important decisions, on behalf of the local communities, on the health and welfare of their patients, and about important decisions to make sure that the funding that comes into hospitals is spent effectively and efficiently and not just handed out the way it was handed out for 11½ years, without any rhyme or reason and without having a proper national direction to the health system.

This national funding will make more money available to meet rising health costs. Everyone recognises that health costs will rise, and that is why we need to act decisively to deal with these rising health costs. We want to set tough new national standards on elective surgery and on emergency departments. We will pick up 60 per cent of the capital costs—something that has never been done in the health system by any federal government. We will deal with teaching and research to make sure that we are getting the proper education into the hospital system and that research is done effectively. We will look at out-of-hospital services to make sure that we do not unnecessarily overburden the hospital system, and we will pick up general practitioner funding. This will all mean more beds in hospitals. It will mean better regional and country hospitals—something, again, that the coalition, including the National Party, for all of their whingeing, all of their moaning, all of their carping, failed to deliver during 11½ years of coalition government. We will deal with preventative healthcare strategies. This is a package about ensuring that we take our hospital system forward. We have managed the global financial crisis. We are now about managing the hospital system of this country in the interests of the nation.

It is quite interesting that the Leader of the Opposition rejected this approach even before we had made an announcement. Mr Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, the negative Leader of the Opposition, the carping Leader of the Opposition, the mean-spirited Leader of the Opposition, following in the mean-spirited steps of his former leader, John Howard—what is this man about? He is about a con job on climate change and a con job on paid maternity leave. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that Senator Cameron should use his five minutes on the Report on GST revenue sharing relativities: 2010 review to mount one of the few defences of Mr Rudd’s proposed health scheme. We all know, and I think Australians generally know, that Mr Rudd’s scheme was, as always, all talk and no action. Of course, it was designed to take the attention away from the Labor government’s pure mismanagement of the giveaway insulation program overseen by Minister Garrett. Mr Rudd had to do something, so he tried to divert attention with this hastily thought up hospital program. Curiously, that is why I came into the chamber—to talk about GST relativities and to try and find out from the Labor government exactly how they were going to take 30 per cent of GST revenues from the states and feed them into this particular program. Of course, we all know that, as silly and completely incompetent as most of the states are—and I exclude Western Australia from that—they will not give you 30 per cent of the GST, Senator Cameron, and you knew it, and so did your leader, Mr Rudd. And I see you nodding in agreement with me. So you have all known that this great hospital plan will not—

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Senator Macdonald has put words into my mouth that were never there. I do not and did not agree with him, and I would ask him to retract that statement.

Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Certainly there were no words, but a nodding of the head up and down, as opposed to from side to side, tells me something. But Mr Rudd would agree with me in private, Senator Cameron. We all know Mr Rudd brought this program in knowing that the states would not approve it and knowing that this Senate, which is the states’ house, would also not approve it. So it was all more of this ‘blah, blah, blah’. It is why people—not me, I might add, but others—are calling him Prime Minister Blah Blah, because it is all talk and no action. This particular document on relativities of GST brings this to the fore.

In passing, I might note, from this document, that the powerhouse states of Australia who are keeping Australia going at the moment—that is, Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory; it is Northern Australia where all the wealth of this nation comes from—do very badly out of these proposed changes. Western Australia in particular does very badly and that has been commented upon by Premier Barnett. I note that the Northern Territory has been absolutely shattered by this proposal, and I will expect the Northern Territory Labor Party senator to be in here criticising this report on those grounds. While my home state of Queensland has not gone backwards, it has barely gone forward. And these are the states that are keeping Australia going.

Can someone from the Labor Party tell me how the states are possibly going to deal with this grab of 30 per cent of their GST moneys? We all know of course that it only needs one state to object, and clearly the state Labor government in Victoria is going to object, so this whole hospital plan is nothing more than blah, blah, blah.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian public will enlighten them.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Mr Rudd or Senator Cameron had any credibility they would explain how the states are going to get by with 30 per cent of their GST revenue, their only growth tax, being taken back from them. That is highlighted in this report on GST revenue sharing relativities. It also, curiously, completely negates the argument that Senator Cameron was, in all loyalty to his leader—and I respect him for doing that—putting. But he cannot have meant anything that he said in his comments on the public hospital funding proposed by Mr Rudd. We all know it is a fraud. We all know it is more of Mr Rudd’s ‘all talk and no action’ approach to government. It will not succeed—but then Mr Rudd never wanted it to succeed. He never thought it would. He knew, as Senator Cameron knows, that the states will not agree to it. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.