E&OE...................................................................................................
Well thank you very much Paul for those very warm words of welcome
and might I say extremely entertaining and enthusing speech. I acknowledge
my parliamentary colleagues, Kerry Chikarovski, Joe Hockey, Jillian
Skinner, Brendan Nelson, Andrew Humpherson and all the other distinguished
guests. Ladies and gentlemen I am very pleased to be here for a number
of reasons.
Firstly, but not only, I am delighted to be associated with a project
for which Paul Ramsey has been the basic inspiration. I have an immense
personal regard for Paul. He is a very dedicated enthusiastic, optimistic
Australian. The only limitation on this country's future prospects
is that we don't have eighteen and three quarter million people
who are simultaneously positive, talented, optimistic and hopeful
about the future and Paul is one of those blokes who always leaves
you a little more enthusiastic and a little more energetic and a little
more encouraged to do something positive and to do something good
after you have had a yarn to him. Whether it is in communications
or the private health field or whatever, he is always out there punching
very hard to make a positive contribution. After hearing some of his
tales of earlier years and what they did with those Jesuits I am glad
that I didn't go teach at Riverview.
But ladies and gentlemen the other of a number of reasons why I am
very pleased to be here today is that is an opportunity to say something
about a constant theme of mine in recent days and that is the concept
within our society of a social coalition. We all, I guess, want the
best for our country, we all want Australia to be a strong country,
we want it to be a fair country and we want it to be a decent society.
We all want there to be proper underpinnings so that the poor in our
community are well looked after, but we also want a society that encourages
people who have aspirations to do better, to work hard in the belief
that they get some return. I think we all agree on that whatever our
backgrounds are, whatever our politics are and whatever our views
are about public policy issues. I think we also recognise that there
is no one section of our society that can achieve those goals operating
on it's own.
There used to be a view in society probably 20 or 30 years ago that
you solved every problem by handing it over to the Government, particularly
the Federal Government, and that if you just got the Federal Government
to establish a program and pour a lot of money into it then that would
solve every difficulty. Then I think we went through a bit of a reaction
to that to a belief that the Government was hopeless at everything
and it had really no role in society at all except perhaps for providing
the wherewithal to defend the country and provide the Police and a
few basic services and that everything should be left to the private
sector.
Now, I think that we have realised that that doesn't quite work
either important though the private sector is, and dedicated though
all of us are to it. I think though what we have come to believe,
quite rightly in more recent years is that we all do have to work
together in a very co-operative way and that is why I talk frequently,
not only in areas like health and education and social security but
I talk very frequently in a lot of areas about the need to build this
social coalition, about the need for people to work together. The
Government does have a role, the private sector has a role, health
professionals, in the case of health policy have a role and of course
the great charitable religious and welfare organisations of our society
also have a very important role. What we really want to do is to find
the best combination, with each of those sectors of society contributing
those things that they can do best. In many ways our public health
and our private health system, collectively the Australian health
care system has the beginnings, I believe, of the very effective social
coalition.
It is fashionable unfortunately in this country and everybody is a
bit guilty of it, the politicians are guilty of it on occasion, the
media is guilty of it and other people in society are guilty of it,
of knocking the health care system of this country. I want to say
something very strongly in defence collectively of the health care
system. It may have its faults and it may need further reforms and
it may need further innovations but I don't believe there is
a better health system anywhere else in the world. Paul's joke
about the pilot not landing in Moscow is true and the reality is that
if you're a battler and you're earning $30 000 or $40 000
a year or the currency equivalent of that somewhere else in the world,
is if you're going to get ill get ill in Australia. Don't
get ill in the United States, don't get ill certainly in the
old Soviet Union, with great respect to the many people who have come
from the UK health system who maybe here today it is preferable to
get ill in Australia rather than the United Kingdom and overall I
think we do have a very good health system. That doesn't mean
to say it is perfect but it has a lot of things going for it. To start
with we have undoubtedly some of the best health care professionals
in the world, Australian doctors, Australian surgeons are world renowned,
we all know that. And the quality of care delivered by nursing professionals
in all Australian hospitals is of an exceptionally high standard.
We have always punched above our weight as far as medical research
is concerned. And I reminded myself of this when I had the opportunity
last Friday of opening the new gene therapy unit at the Peter McCallum
Institute in Melbourne of just how remarkably has been the impact
of the great names in medical research that have come out of this
country. When you think of the contribution of the all the institutes,
of the Walter and Eliza, of the Garvan and the list goes on, of the
Peter McCallum. And in the last budget I was very proud of the fact
that we committed ourselves to double double - the amount of
money being given by the Federal Government to health and medical
research in this country. And we did that because we believe that
Australia is very good at that and we have very good researchers and
very good doctors and that is money well invested and well spent to
build a better future.
We do have very good health outcomes. And we also have a very good
partnership between the public system and the private system. And
you can't build a successful health care system anywhere in the
world without having the two of them. The Government has a role through
the public hospitals. And like so many Australians I've seen
the tremendous quality of work that is performed in public hospitals
in this country. And without that skill and care and dedication the
lives of many Australian families would be the poorer as a consequence.
But we've got to supplement that with the role of the private
hospital. And I think the role of the private hospital was heavily
discounted for a very long time. And I am pleased that we as a government
have done a lot more to encourage private hospitals. We've done
a lot more to encourage people back into private health insurance.
It's a hard battle getting people back into private health insurance
and you won't do it unless you give them incentives. You won't
do it unless you continue assiduously as many have done. And this
hospital is part of that process, of tackling the problem of gaps
in relation to private health insurance. And I make no apology for
the fact that we are investing $1.5 billion a year or more into encouraging
people, giving people an incentive, to remain in private health insurance.
Because it was always part of the Australia that I grew up in that
you had a strong public hospital system underpinned by private health
insurance which people were encouraged to enter and remain a member
of. And that provided a strong supplement of support for the private
hospital system because the one complements the other and there are
things that are done in private hospitals that can only be done within
the ambience of the private sector. And equally there's a broader
social responsibility which is discharged by both the public hospitals
working together with the private hospitals.
And I was glad that Paul made the point that the North Shore Public
Hospital and this hospital work together in a co-operative way. They
do not see each other as rivals. They see each other as co-contributors
to the State health system and that is enormously important. And that
same principle applies, of course, in other areas where you have both
private and public provisions such as education. They're not
rivals. They're co-contributors for the same overall system,
giving people maximum amount of choice and giving them the available
options that they ought to have in our kind of society.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I am really very pleased indeed to be here
today. I'm pleased to honour the philanthropic contribution of
Paul Ramsey to Australian society, to honour the contribution of his
hospital to new standards of excellence and care and comfort when
people are ill. It's certainly located in an easily accessible
part of Sydney. It's not far from Kirribilli, I don't object
to that. And it is a hospital that I know in the short time that it's
been open has already set new standards of comfort and excellence
and care and that is tremendously important. But most importantly
of all it is dedicated to the relief of human suffering, it is dedicated
to a caring approach to human life, it is dedicated to looking after
people when they need assistance and it is dedicated to the better
values and the better aspirations of the Australian community. So
in declaring this hospital formally open may I pay tribute to the
doctors and the nurses and all the other staff who work here. I've
always had an immense admiration for health care professionals in
this country. Their dedication and their skill and their compassion
is always deserving of our understanding and our respect. I thank
them. I thank Paul for his leadership and all the other members of
the board. And I have great pleasure in officially declaring the hospital
open.
[Ends]