PM: First of all it's great to be back here in Hobart, great to be at the Royal Hobart, and here at the repatriation centre and the rehabilitation unit. Because this is where the rubber hits the road when it comes to delivering better health and better hospital services to all Australians, including older Australians, including the good folk of Tasmania more broadly.
We're here to talk about health and hospitals. And together with the Premier, in Canberra over the last several days, we've forged an historic agreement for a new National Health and Hospitals Network, the NHHN - funded nationally, run locally. All for one purpose, to deliver better health and hospital services to working families, to pensioners, and to carers. And that means more hospital beds, more doctors, more nurses to make the system work better.
Here in Tasmania, the key thing is to make sure that we deliver services which make a difference on the ground. And that's why I'm pleased, with the Premier, to have been party to an agreement which will deliver over the next three years $142 million in additional investment, and over the period ahead beyond that, a further $340 million. Let's just go to the immediate period ahead. We're talking about new investments into emergency departments in order to bring about, over the three years ahead, a four hour target for ED waiting times. This is important. It's important for people who go to accident and emergency, knowing they can be treated in time.
For elective surgery, we're also investing some $15 million and a further $8 million as well to bring about a target of 95 per cent of people being seen for elective surgery within clinically acceptable times. We're also investing, nationwide, in a very large expansion in hospital beds, including sub-acute beds of the type that we've been visiting here today at the rehabilitation centre.
For Tasmania, we'll see from 1 July the beginning of a rollout of 30 more of those beds across the state, including in centres like this one.
(The video related to this transcript is available from the Multimedia section of this website.)