Page 3764 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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I anticipate that a Rudd Labor government will work constructively with the territory to address this untenable overlap in planning functions, and engage in collaborative dialogue rather than unproductive interference in matters that should be the prerogative of the Canberra community, such as the development of Pierces Creek. What possible interest could the commonwealth have in the ACT government’s desire to build a sustainable community to replace the one destroyed by the fire? None that is obvious, yet NCA interference saw to it that the rebuilding of a sustainable settlement was doomed.
The ACT government also looks forward to greater engagement on the issue of airport development, which currently sits outside state and territory planning regimes. There is no greater need for a collaborative and coordinated national approach than in the area of health services. Federal Labor will help end the destructive pattern of blame, cost shifting and opportunistic intervention in health and hospitals by establishing a $2 billion national health reform plan in cooperation with the states and territories to reverse the commonwealth underfunding of public hospitals and deliver improved health outcomes for patients in Australia’s healthcare system.
Federal Labor proposes to work with the Council of Australian Governments to establish a national health and hospitals reform commission, which will form the framework for developing Australian health care agreements. As part of its $2 billion national health and hospitals reform plan, federal Labor will invest $220 million in the establishment of GP superclinics. This investment will ensure that more Australian families have access to doctors, nurses, specialists and allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists, podiatrists, dieticians and psychologists, all in one centre, in their local community, where they need them. The ACT is well placed to work with federal Labor and the other states and territories in designing the shape and scope of GP superclinics as they evolve.
Of great benefit to many Canberrans will be the reintroduction of a commonwealth dental program under a federal Labor government. Since this program was scrapped by the Howard government in 1996, the states and territories have been left to carry the burden, dramatically increasing their own financial contributions to dental care. The ACT government, for instance, has increased funding for our dental program by 41 per cent over the past four years. But the haemorrhage of federal funding has been beyond the capacity of the states and territories to completely stem, with the result that even preventable dental conditions among the poor and the disadvantaged progress to the stage that sufferers end up presenting for treatment at our public hospitals. Federal Labor has committed $290 million to fund up to one million dental consultations through a new commonwealth dental health program. It has pledged to work with the states and territories to fix the system, ensuring that all Australians get the dental care they deserve.
This cooperative, consultative approach contrasts sharply with the Howard government’s intentions under its aspirational nationalism approach. In relation to health, this would mean the forced adoption by state and territory governments of local management boards for public hospitals—boards that, incidentally, would reportedly have to be paid for by the states and territories themselves, not by
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