Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

They had 12 years to do something about the health system of Australia and they did nothing—absolutely nothing. The Leader of the Opposition and I were privileged to be invited to last night’s annual dinner of the Australian Medical Association. I listened very keenly to hear a policy speech from the Leader of the Opposition. What I heard again were a number of political one-liners destined for media consumption but not destined for real policy change.

I also appreciate the support for the government’s plan which we received last night from the head of the AMA, Dr Pesce, who said:

We are heading for a once-in-a-generation change to the way health services are delivered and funded and managed in this country.

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From the top, the Commonwealth must have a greater funding and national planning role.

And from the grassroots, there must be more local clinician input to decision-making at the local level, to ensure funding meets local needs.

That is what the head of the AMA said last night in support of the government’s plan. In the months leading up to the release of the government’s plan only last week, the Minister for Health and Ageing and I travelled across the country to speak with doctors, nurses, patients and those who are intimately associated with the health and hospital system of Australia.

Whether it is in Hobart or in Darwin or in Perth or in Parramatta, right across the country there is one clear message: not enough hospital beds, not enough doctors and not enough nurses. On the question of nurses, in 2008 Access Economics estimated that around 6,000 additional nurses would be needed each year to 2025 over and above the current graduations of 9,000 a year. On GPs, the health department estimated that demand for GP services is likely to increase by around 15 per cent by 2020 on current trends and the current GP training pipeline will not meet this demand growth. These are the workforce challenges that we now face. Of course, if you have an insufficient supply of doctors and nurses, what results is longer waiting times. The NHHRC reported that data indicates that the median waiting time across all types of elective surgery was 34 days in 2007-08, up from 28 days in 2003-04—getting worse and worse. On emergency departments, 31 per cent of patients presenting in emergency departments in 2007-08 were not seen within clinically acceptable times. This is the direct product of sustained underinvestment in the system by the Australian government and governments across the nation.

Back in July of 2006, when a certain Leader of the Opposition was Minister for Health and Ageing, he got a letter from the head of the AMA warning him and warning the government of the looming crisis in medical training. This is what the head of the AMA had to say to the Leader of the Opposition when he was discharging such a fine set of responsibilities as health minister of Australia. This is what the AMA warned back in 2006:

… without urgent action by all governments, Australia will have a new generation of doctors who … will struggle to gain the detailed education and significant clinical skills needed to practise independently.

He went on to say that this would:

… have catastrophic effects on the medical workforce, our hospitals, and the access to quality health care that patients rightly expect.

That is what the head of the AMA wrote to the Leader of the Opposition when he was in the position of health minister of Australia. What did the Leader of the Opposition as health minister of Australia do in response to this representation from the AMA? Nothing. Instead, the then health minister decided to rip out $1 billion from the public hospital system, and that $1 billion is the equivalent of 1,025 hospital beds. They do not like this number—$1 billion ripped out by Tony Abbott when he was minister for health, which is the equivalent of 1,025—

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