HOST: Kevin Rudd, good morning, and welcome to ABC North Coast.
PM: Thank you for having me on the program. It was good to be in Lismore and on the north coast yesterday.
HOST: Your visit to our region has been described as one where you did come bearing gifts- $9.1 million injected into the local healthcare services, particularly cancer care. Is this funding dependent upon the states signing off on your health reform package? Or is this funding guaranteed regardless?
PM: Yvette, our view is that this funding needs to happen anyway, and it will. And the reason is that people are crying out for additional cancer and oncology services across rural and regional Australia. And the north coast is part of that- this $9.1 million goes toward funding a second linear accelerator, a new PET scanner at Lismore Base Hospital, an investment in a 20 unit cancer patient and carer accommodation facility. This has been needed in the region for a long, long time. Janelle Saffin, our local Member, has been very strong on this. That's why it's going ahead regardless.
HOST: How can you guarantee that it goes ahead regardless, if the states don't sign off on your new package? If they don't sign off, isn't the whole health budget going to be thrown into chaos?
PM: We want to make sure that we get a national agreement to look after the proper structure and funding of our health and hospital system for the next ten, twenty and thirty years. That's why these negotiations on the new network are important- funded nationally, run locally, with the Australian Government for the first time being the dominant funders of the public hospital system of the country. And I expect there's going to be a lot of claim and counterclaim on that in the five days remaining between now and COAG. But to go back to your earlier question, cancer services are too critical to play around with. They will happen regardless.
HOST: Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott has said that the Federal Government should've taken over 100% of the health funding budget in this country. Why did you settle for only 60%? Why not 100%? And wouldn't that have ironed out a lot of the problems that we're now seeing with the states trying to up the ante?
PM: You know something? You mentioned before Mr Abbott- Mr Abbott, some years ago when he was Health Minister, said that the Australian Government should take over the system. He had five years to do that as Health Minister, and did not do so. Having become Leader of the Opposition, he's then backed away from that. More recently he's said he's opposed to the Government's proposed health reforms. Then he said he wouldn't necessarily oppose them. And then yesterday we had the latest position, was that- was something concerning 100%, but I'm not quite sure what.
Let's be very clear about the Government's reform plan. Three parts to it. For the first time, the Australian Government will become the exclusive funder of what's called the primary healthcare system. That is, the health services delivered outside of hospitals. Secondly, we're also for the first time becoming the dominant funder of the acute hospital system. And thirdly, we are becoming the exclusive funder of the aged care network of Australia. That is what's fundamental for this reform. And for the hospitals, for the first time we're becoming the dominant funder of their hospitals' recurrent needs, their capital needs, their equipment needs of the type that we're talking about for cancer earlier on. But also, their teaching and training needs as well.
HOST: Well, there are about five more days left before COAG, the meeting of the State Premiers, where they're going to decide on whether to back your package or not. The Victorian Premier, Mr Brumby, seems to be dead against it at this stage, and he's going to address the National Press Club today to outline his reasons why. How confident are you that you can push your agenda through?
PM: Well, obviously there's going to be a lot of claim and counterclaim for the period ahead. I understand that. But can I just say on the question of Premier Brumby, that what Mr Brumby seems to be saying is simply deliver another blank cheque to the state health bureaucracies of Australia, and it'll all be fine in the morning. We actually don't have that view. Our view is that we need to do this in two stages. One is we must ensure that the current system is reformed in order to get rid of duplication, overlap and waste, which is currently costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year. And secondly, then invest in the growth we need for the system for the future.
HOST: Mr Rudd, the architect of Medicare, John Deeble, who your party often cites as a health expert, has come out this morning and has not been very flattering about your health agenda. He says that the cost-shifting going on, the $15 billion gain that is promised to the states over ten years by the Commonwealth is in fact the extra amount the Commonwealth would have had to pay to maintain the average 8% increase in spending over the past decade, so that all we're really going to see is cost-shifting.
PM: Well perhaps I haven't seen those comments from John obviously his preferred model for the future wasn't adopted by either the independent investigatory review that we conducted for 18 months - the first 18 months that the Government was in office, or on the subsequent decisions that the Government took in response to that exhaustive inquiry into the current state of the health and hospital system, and how we need to reform it.
Secondly, on the question of growth for the system, let me just make three quick points. Right now, under the Australian Healthcare Agreement which we signed a year or so ago, within the first year or so of this Government being in office, there is already a 50% increase in the Australian Government's allocation to the states and territories for their public hospital budgets. That's happening now- 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13.
Secondly, what we're also saying is this- for this new system, for the first time the Australian Government becomes the dominant funder, but on top of that, the Australian Government also takes on to its shoulders the lion's share of the future growth of the system. This is entirely new. That means us taking $15 billion worth of investment during the course of the remainder of the decade on to our own shoulders, and taking that from the states, because the states cannot sustain the growth in funding necessary to keep the system going for the future.
HOST: And that was the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, speaking following his visit to our region yesterday.