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

The waste and incompetence of this government is manifest. Every department is touched by it and the reasons can always be traced back to one very common factor and that is that political advantage riddles every decision made by the government. It infects their minds. We can rarely find any financial decision or budget outlay that is carried out based on sound financial reasons, need or national interest. The government’s announcement of its superclinic program, with outlays of hundreds of millions of dollars, is one of the more profound examples of waste and political bias. The superclinic program is simply no way to run a government or to use taxpayers’ money. The government’s 2008 budget papers piously promised:

People living in GP Super Clinic locations (in a diverse range of areas, from what might be considered traditionally ‘remote’ in Mount Isa to areas with expanding populations such as Palmerston in the Northern Territory, to other regional centres and rural locations including Geelong, the Riverina and Ipswich) will benefit from improved access to integrated primary health care services, which will complement and enhance health services available in these communities.

You can see from those budget papers that the program was primarily for remote and regional areas. These were the pious beginnings of the government’s plan to spend, initially, $280 million on 36 superclinics. Then, in 2010, the Gillard government committed a further $370 million over four years for another 28 superclinics. So that is some 64 superclinics at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. This program is not supported by the AMA. It was reported last year, for example, that the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Medical Association said that the superclinics were unsustainable. The Mercury reported:

The state president … predicted the Clarence clinic would be forced to close within five to 10 years.

He said the Whitlam government had set up community health centres offering every conceivable service under one roof, like the super clinics.

He went on to say that they would not get enough doctors to make them viable and that after 10 years they would all be sold off. He said that the superclinics were a complete reflection of the Whitlam government policy. There are two key reasons why the superclinic program is a rort and ought to be closed down or, at the very least, scaled down and brought back to a more worthy intent—namely for superclinics to be established in the rural and remote areas that are in need. Firstly, the government clinics are not so super. Only one clinic out of seven built and operating—out of a promised 64—is running after-hours services. So they are not running after-hour services, let alone the 24-hour services that were expected from them. They are not so super when a measly two out of the seven operating—of the promised 64—are providing universal bulk-billing. So they hardly represent establishments for the needy.

The second reason the superclinic program ought to be abolished is that the locations bear absolutely no relationship to the need, as was the pious intent first stated in the budget papers. In fact, my claim that there is no method—at least not financial—nor needs related formula is borne out by the statements of the minister and the department head. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing said, I believe, in a recent Senate estimates committee hearing that the criteria for selecting sites was a matter for the government, not her department. She was saying ‘the government’ but meant ‘the minister’s office’ or even ‘the cabinet’, but not her department. There is no formula to it. Health Minister Nicola Roxon was forced to concede that her department—and this is through FOI—did not do any research on the GP services before she chose the sites and allocated some $650 million. In response to a question on notice from the opposition the minister, through Mr Andrew Southcott, said:

The Department of Health and Ageing did not undertake an analysis of existing primary healthcare providers.

It is a very ad hoc decision-making process. In my state of Victoria there are two prime examples of mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ money in locating superclinics. I have spoken about the Berwick superclinic location in this chamber before. It has not been built and, even though it has been years behind schedule, it should never be built. I refer to my Hansard of 17 June 2010 in regard to the Berwick clinic which said:

The government clinic will be located on the grounds of the Monash University Berwick campus on the corner of Clyde Road and Kangan Drive ...

Within three minutes of this proposed superclinic is another private superclinic. Within another five minutes down the road there is yet another superclinic. So it is already a well-serviced area. You might think that there may be a shortage of doctors in the area. But there is not. Under the government’s own formula it is not an area with a shortage of doctors. Why would you think the government would build another superclinic and waste all that money in an area that is not short of services? Because it is a Labor marginal seat, that is why.

The other example is at South Morang and Mill Park. There is a proposed clinic for South Morang, another suburb of Melbourne, to which $3.7 million has been allocated. Yet just five minutes down the road is the largest private superclinic, I believe, in Australia. Within five minutes of that are three other clinics. They are not as big but they are clinics that operate very much along the lines of superclinics. Already there are four clinics within an area of five minutes of each other. How close to them do you think the government are going to build their new proposed superclinic? It is within minutes by car and virtually next door to the already existing superclinic at Mill Park. Why would they do that? Is there a shortage of doctors or services in that area? No. It is a Labor held seat. The minister has already conceded that this is not done on a needs basis. There is no formula to this at all. This is just another example of the whiteboard approach, which went into the political lexicon many years ago in the previous Labor government, the Keating Labor government.

This is no different, but now we are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars. It would be impossible for the government to ignore the private operators that service the particular areas of the two examples I have given. It would be impossible for the government to not know, not only that they are well serviced, but that there is not a shortage of doctors in these areas. Why are they setting up these superclinics in these areas? I can only say that it is for base political reasons. That is why this program ought to be ground to a halt and abolished.