Page 1531 - Week 05 - Thursday, 7 May 2015
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There is a bubble that was never in any budget anywhere that was put in at the death throes of a very dysfunctional Labor government as part of their $600 billion in debt. When the current government got in, it realised that this money was not in the budget and that there was no plan. There was no way that this money could be afforded. It did what was responsible and said, “We’ll revert to the nine per cent that is in the budget.”
They say there are some health cuts. No, there are not. That money never existed; it was not in the budget. When they say that they are reducing the amount of money, they are not. The amount of money coming from the feds and being expended on health nationally is going up at about nine per cent. ABC Fact Check said that Treasurer Joe Hockey “is keeping the base and growth funding in place until 30 June, 2017, which means if hospitals grow efficiently the commonwealth will still pay for nearly half the costs”.
That is an important point—if it is efficient. The problem is that it is not just about a well-funded health system; it is about a well-functioning health system. We are seeing that the dollars that are being put into the system—and we want to see dollars go in—are not being spent as effectively or efficiently as they can be.
We have seen rollovers and delays in capital infrastructure, delays in the secure mental health facility, delays in the bush healing farm, and the women’s and children’s hospital fiasco. We have seen the problems with the emergency department, including the doctoring of data and some of the worst figures in the nation. There is elective surgery and the debacle there.
It is good that Mr Corbell is now saying, “Oh, look, there has been an improvement.” We had very good figures in 2001. He and his mob got in and completely wrecked the system. They have made some recovery since they wrecked it, and they are now trying to pat themselves on the back. We will listen to you when you get near the sorts of timeliness figures that were achieved by the previous Liberal government. Then you might have something to skite about. Until then, you need to get on with your work.
There are workplace culture issues. Doctors threaten to strike. There are the cultural issues that we have seen. There was the Calvary hospital debacle that we saw a number of years ago. There was the bullying in obstetrics and the obstetric unit that is at significant risk. We know there is a significant problem. We know there is overcrowding; we have seen that from the AMA. We have seen the real problems with overcrowding in our system.
The other problem is that our hospitals are the most expensive in the country. Although we support the amount of funding going in, the way it is spent is really problematic. Comparing apples with apples, the National Health Performance Authority, when comparing 48 major metropolitan hospitals, found that the Canberra Hospital and Calvary are the least efficient in the nation. That would have been enough. If we had been as efficient as some of the hospitals in New South Wales, it would have equated to an extra 63,000 more acute patients being treated. If that money was reinvested in our health system, it would be equivalent to 2,000 nurses.
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