The Rudd Government will help create 133,000 jobs, invest $15.1 billion to stimulate the economy and drive significant reform in health, education, housing, business deregulation, and closing the indigenous life expectancy gap.
Through COAG, the Australian Government will invest $15.1 billion in a national reform package focused primarily on improving schools and hospitals, and training more quality teachers, nurses and doctors.
This investment by the Commonwealth Government will deliver a significant stimulus to the Australian economy in the face of the global financial crisis.
HEALTH
The Australian Government will deliver a massive $64.4 billion investment in health and hospital funding, including through the National Healthcare Agreement.
This will deliver more doctors and nurses and will take pressure off our hospitals by investing in keeping people well.
This demonstrates the Rudd Government's determination to work with the States and Territories to end the blame game and help rebuild our public hospitals.
In exchange for this funding, the States and Territories will be required to report on key problem areas, like avoidable deaths and infection rates.
To equip our hospitals for the future, the Government will invest in:
* A new National Health Care Agreement that will deliver an extra $4.8 billion for public hospitals and a higher rate of annual indexation - 7.3 per cent into the future
* A one off injection of $750 million in 2008-09 which could support up to 1.9 million emergency department services to take pressure off emergency departments.
The agreement includes a series of National Partnerships, in which clear benchmarks have been set, including:
* $1.1 billion to train more doctors, nurses and other health professionals - the lifeblood of our health system
* $500 million as a one off contribution in 2008-09 to deliver an additional 1,600 sub acute beds for over 31,000 patients
* $448 million to deliver preventative health measures, including reward payments to the states for meeting specified outcomes
* $806 million to improve Indigenous health and close the life expectancy gap
The additional ongoing resources provided by the Rudd Government in the National Health Care Agreement will be able to provide the equivalent of:
* 350,000 additional emergency department presentations
* 200,000 additional same day stays
* 170,000 additional overnight stays
* 2.5 million extra services in clinics attached to hospitals
Together with the investments the Government has already made in hospitals, this could support an additional 3,750 beds in 2009-10, growing to 7,800 additional beds by 2012-13.
EDUCATION REVOLUTION
In a new chapter for the education revolution, the Australian Government will invest in an historic education reform package.
This unprecedented COAG reform package will deliver greater transparency in schools, improve teacher quality, improve literacy and numeracy and lift up the most disadvantaged schools in this nation.
The education reform package includes:
* $42.4 billion National Education Agreement
* $550 million National Partnership on Improving Teacher Quality
* $540 million National Partnership on Literacy & Numeracy
* $1.1 billion National Partnership on Low SES School Communities
* $807 million for computers in schools on-costs
* $970 million for Early Childhood reforms
Improving teacher quality requires both improved school leadership by principals and new approaches to teacher recruitment, retention and reward. COAG today agreed to deliver through a specific commitment of $50 million for world leading professional development and support which will empower principals to be able to better manage their schools to achieve improved student results and higher quality.
The $42.4 billion National Education Agreement includes an additional $557 million for government primary schools due to the Rudd Government ending an unfair funding practice where government primary schools received a smaller proportion of funding per student (8.9 per cent of the average cost of educating a child) than government secondary schools (10 per cent).
The Australian Government will offer States and Territories an additional $807 million to meet legitimate and additional costs of the new computers purchased through the National Secondary School Computer Fund, bringing the total commitment to $2 billion over five years.
A STRONGER ECONOMY AND BETTER FEDERATION
New National Partnership Programs payments will also include major reform of the Commonwealth-State relations that will deliver better services to Australian families.
This landmark agreement comes at a difficult time for our economy, in the midst of global crisis that has reduced Commonwealth revenues by $40 billion. These investments will be funded from the existing surpluses over the forward years.
The agreement reached today by the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments has a strong emphasis on reviving our flagging productivity growth, especially in education and infrastructure investment which will boost Australian economic capacity.
That means this agreement will be crucial in providing ongoing stimulus for economic growth over the medium term, over and above the initial GDP stimulus from the agreement.
Today marks a new beginning in Federal-State relations and heralds a new era of co-operative federalism, with governments from across the political divide working together to strengthen the economy, protect jobs, and deliver better services to the Australian people.