Rudd vs Abott health debate

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDMar 24 2010

During yesterday's 75-minute debate between the Prime Minister and Tony Abbott at the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Rudd conceded that small regional and rural hospitals might have to be given block funding grants to keep them afloat should they not be be able to survive on his new activity-based funding formula.

''Of course, we would look at a form of national block funding which was able to underpin the continuation of smaller rural hospitals in the future,'' Mr Rudd said.

Abbot’s main focus was Mr Rudd’s policy in which the Commonwealth would fund 60 per cent of public hospitals and 100 per cent of primary and aged care services. Public hospitals would be run by local health networks funded from Canberra but administered by the states.

Mr Abbott also criticised the policy as overly bureaucratic and and was only in tune with the election year and has no backing to be ultimately achieved.

''Anyone can make promises,'' he said. ''The hard part is delivering on them and this is where Mr Rudd has so consistently failed.''

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton today also said that

“What we did get out of the debate yesterday was an admission by the Prime Minister that potentially under his program as he promises it now a couple of hundred hospitals around the country will close in regional areas unless he makes adjustments to his plan”.

“That was a fair admission. And it's exactly why the state premiers have had reluctance to sign up to this program. It's why we've been critical and it's why many people, stakeholders in the health space, have been critical of this plan as well.”

“It just hasn't been thought through, this is policy on the run by the Prime Minister, it's aimed at a headline and it's certainly not aimed at good policy to fix our hospitals,” he said.

The West Australian Premier Mr. Colin Barnett supports the Prime Minister in his health reforms but is still opposed to use of 30% of GST revenue from the state to fund the plans.

However, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister returned that, “The Prime Minister has always made it clear rural and regional hospitals won't have to close as a result of the activity-based funding model.” “The independent umpire will determine the best price for services in a particular area; it won't set country prices with city assumptions.” “Since as early as March 2008, when the Commonwealth and States both agreed to develop activity based funding, it was made clear that this would be undertaken while still ensuring the availability of small and regional hospital services.” “This is what the Prime Minister intends to deliver on - and if block funding is required to ensure the viability of a hospital then that step will be taken.”

Opposition leader Mr Abbott's challenged the Prime Minister for further debates after yesterday’s health debate. This has arisen as a United Nations report revealed Australia received 6,170 asylum applications in 2009 - 30 per cent more than in the previous year. That is 1.6 per cent of the total around the world, where 50,000 applications were made to the United States and 42,000 to France.

Among the burning issues to be raised border protection remained one of the first. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the Government's softened stance on border protection is behind the rise. "Clearly we have an Australian problem here and it's a product of Australian policy forces," he said. Immigration Minister Chris Evans says Australia is getting more people because more people are fleeing Afghanistan. But he says Australia's proportion of the world total is still very low. "We're getting less than 2 per cent of those fleeing to industrialized countries, but we are seeing increased arrivals from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka," he said. "While the situation in those countries remains difficult, we'll continue to see people arrive." Australia is ranked 16th out of 44 industrialized nations in terms of how many asylum seeker applications are received.