PM Transcripts

HOST: Prime Minister, Good morning. PM: Morning John. HOST: Right across Australia, of course, concern about the condition of your wife Therese. What's the latest? PM: Well, I'm in Cairns at the moment and Therese was at dinner with me last night for the Pacific Island Forum. She just felt as if she had the symptoms of some sort of stomach virus and so we went off to hospital and she was admitted over night. She's has the usual battery of tests and she's being well treated by the good medical and nursing staff at Cairns Base Hospital. HOST: So was she admitted to the cardiac unit? PM: She was just admitted to the hospital. I think she just went to accident and emergency. HOST: You're sounding very relaxed about it so that's obviously a good sign for business. PM: Well, I think, John, you'd all appreciate something called patient confidentiality and patient privacy, so she's in fine spirits. I was with her a lot of the night and I saw her very early this morning and you may know that she's just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, so she's probably made of stronger stuff than you or I, mate. HOST: Sure. Sure. Kevin Rudd let's talk about the hospital situation. You would have picked up perhaps in the Cairns Post today another terrifying situation whereby its bursting at the seams. Now we all acknowledge it is a State Government issue largely, but there's also a lot of interest in your position at the moment on the future on hospitals around Australia. I had a another caller yesterday. Once again a terrifying detail. His, wife who was in the vulnerable category trying to get into the hospital, she was admitted, sorry, she arrived at 6:45pm. She left at around 1:30am after having been, according to her husband, abused by staff for having taken up space. Her point was she was very, very ill. She was in the vulnerable group and she'd taken advice from a paramedic, the ambulance officer to actually presented at the hospital. She was told we have no room, we have no swabs, it's very expensive for the State Government, take a disprin and go home. She was very, very ill. Talk to us about this. What can the people in North Queensland to about this dreadful situation? PM: Let me just go to what we are seeking to do any why I'm engaged in public consultations with the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon today in Cairns base hospital. This will be only the fourth of our public hospital consultations around the country - the first at Royal North Shore in Sydney, the second at Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide, the third at Townsville, and the fourths is here. Now, the reason we're doing this is because right across Australia we have 750 hospitals and if you stand back from it all, and Cairns is an important one in the midst of all that, if you stand back from it all, our whole system, health and hospitals, is under stress. Why? We've got a growing population, we've secondly got an ageing population ,we also have an explosion of chronic diseases, and on top of that the spiralling cost of individual medical treatments. So theses are challenges with which our medical system and that of many other advanced economies are now wrestling. The key challenge is what are we going to do about it? At present, what we have done is commission, just after we came into office, a National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, led by an expert, Dr Christine Bennett, and a range of medical specialists and others, including from the nursing profession, nationwide. They've consulted far and wide across the country. They've delivered a report of some 123 recommendations which your listeners should go to, it's up on the website - www.yourhealth.gov.au - and it goes across the whole spectrum: * Who should have the responsibility for preventative health care?
* Who should have responsibility for primary health care? That is, our GP and GP-related services.
* Who should have responsibility for ensuring that our accident and emergencies are properly funded and properly staffed?
* Similarly, with our elective surgery waiting lists, who's responsible for that and who can we bring it down?
* Acute hospital beds, sub-acute services once surgery has occurred, together with aged care beds, dental health and mental health.
It deals with the whole spectrum and the reason we need to deal with this as a whole spectrum is this represents a huge cost to the country every year and if we're going to fundamentally reform it, which we need to for the future for the reasons I outlined before, we've got to be very clear cut about how it's going to be done because we want to make sure we've got the best and most affordable health and hospital system for the future, both for the taxpayer and for the individual patient, and we need to sort out once and for all the best lines of responsibility between the Commonwealth and the State Governments. That's what this is about and that's why I'm taking those recommendations to Cairns Base Hospital later today for a seminar with all the relevant representatives of the health sector here in this region - to hear their response to that report's recommendations. HOST: By the way there is a report there in the Post today and a nurse called Sally, for the sake of this story, she says she's hoping you get the message from the nurses at the coalface. PM: Well, I actually spoke to a few of nurses at the coalface overnight, because I was at the coalface with Therese, but on top that what we've done is we've invite all the nursing directors from throughout the region and the Cairns Base Hospital and, as I understand it, the overwhelming majority of Cairns Base unit mangers, and also the Queensland nurses union local organisers have been invited as attending. We and to hear from nurses, we want to her from doctors, we want to hear from other health professionals, because a series of recommendations delivered by a National Reform Commission, which has taken into account the total needs of our national system, some 750 hospitals across the country, we want to road test those against major regional hospitals like this one. That's why we're here, that's why the Health Minster and I will be spending time, listening, primarily, to the response from those on the ground, as we did in Townsville several days ago and done in Adelaide and Sydney last week. HOST: Prime Minister, just quickly to the jobless figures yesterday. Obviously it's been embraced by the nation as good news, although a very measured response from Julia Gillard. Our figure here in North Queensland, sadly though, is double that. We've had a response from the Federal Member talking about the so-called jobs tsar. Nobody knows how he's going to be creating jobs at all. What more can be done for our towering jobless figure here in Far North Queensland? PM: John, you're right. Unemployment is too high up here and our job as a Federal Government is to do everything we can to bring that down, given that we're all being hit by the global economic recession. Here's one thing that we have done, and then let me talk about one thing that we can do further. In terms of what we have done, what we have injected into this region through our national economic stimulus strategy is some $460 million - and that's not just through cash payments to pensioners, carers and veterans and to families, but that's been important to keep the retail and part of the tourism sector going. It's also the investment now being unfolded through this massive investment in the local schools. We have some $100 million rolling out to our primary and secondary schools in this region. We've got 61 new building projects spread across 41 schools worth $79 million. Seven new language and science centres, and I'll go to Trinity Base High School yesterday looking at their proposed new language centre. These are all creating jobs for local tradesmen and local small business people as well. It still doesn't solve the problem of the global economic crisis, but our job is to cushion it and our strategy is to support jobs and apprenticeships and small business today by investing in the sort of infrastructure we need for tomorrow. So that's what we're doing now, and if we weren't doing that, and injecting that, nearly half a billion dollars into this regional economy to counter the impact of the global economic recession, unemployment, regrettably, would be even higher. Secondly tourism is something which, obviously, locals have spoken to me about since I've been here with the Pacific Island Forum. Tourism is a huge generator of employment up here and it's been whacked and hit by the impact of the global recession, in terms of what is turning into an overall decrease in international visitor numbers to Australia, down 4 percent this year, to the US they're down 10 percent, the UK 12 precent, Japan 27percent, but we've still got to lift our game. We've already put in a $4 million recovery package, with $2 million for marketing measures, managed by Tourism Australia, and a further $2 million to assist the tourism industry more generally. Also, we have $8.3 million in grants that will be announced in October. This is across the national industry, but I am looking at ways in which we can further help the tourism industry here by way of further promotion in Far North Queensland as well. But you're right, unemployment is too high. We need to be as effective as we can supporting all those good people out there trying to turn the wheels of the local economy up here through the tourism sector. HOST: Let me throw an idea at you. This came up in one of the national papers this week, the suggestion we could do some dual-marketing with New Zealand. They're celebrating 10 years of, well, a deliriously successful campaign. It's been pointed out on the program this week the synergies that would exist for somebody choosing to have a holiday from, for example, from Germany or anywhere in Europe coming firstly to a tropical experience here in Cairns and then moving on to that other magnificent experience in New Zealand nearby. Is there a chance you could take the issue up with John Key? He's also, of course, the Tourism Minister of New Zealand, and perhaps we could look at some, a dual-marketing campaign. PM: Yeah John, I've got a completely open mind on creative ideas for the future. We shouldn't be sort of locked into traditional ways of doing things, so we'll take that on board and throw it to the tourism experts and see what we can come up with. By the way, you mentioned New Zealand - here's a fact for you. Visitation in the month of June showed that declines in Japanese visitation to New Zealand were 50 percent worse than they were to Australia, some 250 percent worse for Korean visitors to New Zealand vis-à-vis Australia, and for Chinese visitors also appreciably worse. So, look, everyone is doing it tough through this global economic recession. It's awful and it's affecting all economies everywhere in terms of global tourism numbers, so that means we've just got to re-double our efforts to provide a greater boost for effective tourism promotion for this wonderful region, which I've got to say, every time I come here I love even more and more and this is a stunning part of the world. HOST: Well come back more and more. Just before you go, I know you're in a hell of a hurry. PM: You know, John, how many times I've been here over the years? 20, 30, I've been here a lot so I actually know this place well, I love it well, I am not an occasional visitor. HOST: Well, fundamentally you're a Queenslander and we're all happy about that. One final point, an election, we're into the second half of this term. Who would you rather contest the next election against - Turnbull, Hockey or Andrew Robb? PM: You know something John? That's entirely a matter for the Liberal Party and I've already indicated what I believe the Liberal Party should do in response to their current leader, who's displayed an appalling lack of judgement on matters most recently and I think matters in general. Look, the key thing for the Government, though, is to get on with the business of governing. This is a massive, the problems you just pointed out to me before and the legitimate questions you raised in this interview - the state of the economy and the impact on local jobs, what are we going to do long term to try and deal with these great challenges facing our health and hospital system, quite apart from what we need to invest in education - this is what the Government spends 99% of its time on. It's what I spend 99% of my time on. I think people are getting sick and tired of carping, negative politics all the time. They just want practical answers to the problems which we face in fantastic regions like this. HOST: Prime Minister, thanks for your time this morning. PM: And thank you to your listeners for their hospitality shown to the good people from the Pacific Islands Forum. We've brought hundreds of people to town for this forum. I think it's been a significant injection into the local economy, but my playback from all the heads of Government is how much they've appreciated the hospitality they're received from the people of Cairns. HOST: Kevin Rudd, many thanks.