MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE – HOSPITALS
December 02, 2008
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (4.21 pm) — 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 byelection, 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.
Mr Byrne — Why don’t you shave off your moustache?
Mr CHESTER — 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 postelection 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.
Mr Hartsuyker — Temporary deficits!
Mr CHESTER — 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)