Subject:
Mersey Hospital Tasmania.
E&OE...
COX:
Mr Howard, good morning to you?
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning.
COX:
What exactly is it in this issue that's brought the, as you call it, direct intervention?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this is a clear case of a local community, there's about 70,000 people affected by the operations of this hospital and I've been to Devonport recently and I've talked to a lot of people and I've had a lot of representations on this issue from Mark Baker, the Federal Member, and we take the view that this community is large enough and sufficiently isolated to be deserving of a proper range of public hospital facilities. Now I know that normally these matters are decided by state governments but the latest available figures, and they're a couple of years old, the latest available figures indicate that 53 to 54 per cent of all public hospital funding in Tasmania comes originally from the Commonwealth. Now that figure may have changed a little bit over the last couple of years but it's in that broad area. And it's our opinion that on occasions when clearly the State Government concern has not acted in a way that satisfies local community need that there is a case for the Commonwealth intervening directly. We will be funding in effect the local partnership to run the hospital.
COX:
What does the local partnership mean exactly?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it means that there'll be...we'll provide money to a trust and that trust will be run by members of the community, including local health professionals and business leaders and regional local government. The intention would be to rename the hospital, the Mersey Community Hospital and I'll be saying a few more things about this later today when I'm in Devonport and I'll be writing to Mr Lennon outlining the proposal. We'll be providing the funding, I want to make that clear, we'll be making some requests of the State Government but they're certainly going to be very reasonable. But in the end Tim let's just remember one thing, people in local communities are not fussed as to who provides a service as long as the service is provided, let's not get into a lather of sweat about who provides what. I find as I move around the Australian community that overwhelmingly what the public want is the service to be provided. If it's provided by the state government, that's fantastic, if it's provided by the Federal Government, that's equally fantastic and this is not part of a pattern to take everything over from the states, that's not the case at all. I mean some of the State Premiers will say that. But what it's designed to do is that where a public need is not being met then the Commonwealth has a role, in appropriate circumstances, to intervene.
COX:
By what criteria will you assess that going forward, will it be, will you be cherry-picking the areas that need direct intervention, will you be intervening in the matters of the Ouse and Rosebery Hospitals in Tasmania that don't have the luxury of another hospital 20 minutes up the road?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Tim it will depend on the situation in each individual community but what we will do in relation to the hospital in Devonport is to treat this as something of a test case and if this works out well, and we have every reason to believe it will, then it may be something that we will do in other parts of the country.
COX:
Do the people on the ground know it'll be a test case? I haven't heard that before, it wasn't in your YouTube announcement?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well when I say test case, it doesn't mean that we....we're in for the long haul in relation to the Devonport Hospital, but if this works well then there's no reason why it mightn't happen in other parts of the country. That's the point I'm making.
COX:
Alright, well will you be intervening at Ouse and Rosebery as well in Tasmania?
PRIME MINISTER:
No what we're doing is intervening in Devonport for the reasons that I have explained and we will see how that goes. But Tim what the community wants is adequate services and what is clearly the view of people in this part of Tasmania, in the Devonport area, and you're talking about a catchment of some 70,000 people, what they want is a full-facility public hospital and they're about to lose it, and they're about to lose it because the Tasmanian Government has decided to alter the arrangements. Now that's the decision of the Tasmanian Government and we've had a look at the situation and we have decided, well this community is deserving of this support and there is no reason why we can't go directly to the local community and provide the funding. Now state governments will always say to the Federal Government, you give us a bucket of money and we will decide how to spend it. Now in many cases when that happens the money is spent wisely, and spent well and we have no complaint, but there are other occasions when we don't think it's spent wisely and well and when we believe that it could be spent in other ways, and also there are other cases where the Federal Government could intervene directly to augment services being provided by state governments. Now the state government might turn around to me and say well look let us decide what the services should be. The only problem with that is that they may make decisions which are not necessarily in the interests of local communities. And I believe that the Commonwealth has something of an overwatch role in relation to these things. That there are certain responsibilities for the states, certain responsibilities for the Federal Government but the public increasingly looks to the national government to plug the gaps and to respond where state and territory governments aren't doing a good enough job.
COX:
Could it be argued though that what people want is not for Canberra to intervene or to take direct intervention as you call it, but to fund the states better so that they can provide better health services?
PRIME MINISTER:
We do fund the states better. I mean 54 per cent of the figures out two years ago, 53-54 per cent of all hospital funding in Tasmania comes from the Federal Government, 60 per cent of the total Tasmanian budget in one way or another comes from the Federal Government. So don't tell me we're not funding Tasmania, we're funding the Tasmanian Government, we are. But you see you've got to get back to this basic reality and that is that the public, whether it's in Devonport or Cooktown or Esperance, the public in Australia want services and they don't really care which level of government delivers those services and if they can be effectively delivered by the Federal Government going direct to a local community all well and good. And if I may make the point, one of the advantages of not having governments of one political persuasion in power at both levels, both state and federal, is that you will get a bit more flexibility and a few more options. I mean a federal Labor government would presumably not want to tread on the toes of a state Labor government and would say