Prime Minister: In the future where we see these reforms going is to, as an Australian Government, fund these local hospital networks directly in order that they will have secure, long-term funding to deliver the best possible services to the people of these communities - that's why, the system again, a National Health and Hospital Network funded nationally, run locally though local hospital networks to make these decisions work on the ground.
We've also seen this morning how some of the practical measures that we've taken so far are beginning to take effect.
Outside we saw the evidence of the construction of the new teaching facility, which we are co-funders as the Australian Government. What does that mean? It means that for local hospital networks and local hospitals like this we can bring in the teaching services which are necessary here in this part of Melbourne relevant to the needs of this community. And so what you'll have there is the onsite clinical training of doctors, the onsite clinical training of nurses in much greater numbers than we've ever had before, and we're proud to be co-investors in that.
Under the new National Health and Hospitals Network the Australian Government will become the dominant funders of those sorts of facilities in the future.
Of course the other areas where we've got some runs on the board is the expansion of the operating theatres that we've seen here today as well at Sunshine.
The fact that we're able to invest already several million dollars in building a new operating theatre, enhancing the existing one to lift the overall throughput of this hospital.
We as the Australian Government would take on the dominant funding responsibility for the future expansion of operating theatres and the future expansion of hospitals themselves like the one here at Sunshine; that's why we need to get this reform done.
(The video related to this transcript is available from the Multimedia section of this website.)