PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE
CANBERRA
13 FEBRUARY 2011
E & O E – PROOF ONLY
Subjects: COAG; National Disaster Resilience Strategy; National health reform; Flood recovery
PM: Thank you very much and clearly COAG has had a long day talking about issues of importance to the nation and I do thanks Premiers and Chief Ministers for their patience and resolve in working through so many long hours and I do want to thank the members of the federal parliamentary press gallery for attending a very late press conference, thank you for that.
Today I want to advise you of two of the important topics COAG has talked about today: first, natural disaster preparedness and then second, health.
On natural disaster preparedness, after the summer of disasters that we have lived through it was important for the nation’s leaders to gather together and to reflect on that summer and what lessons could be learned from it. I thank very much Premier Bligh and Premier Baillieu for leading the Council of Australian Governments in that discussion. As a group we want to take this opportunity to record our very sincere thanks to every emergency services worker, to every police officer, to every ADF officer, to every health worker, to every volunteer who made such a difference during this time of natural disaster.
We did share experiences and we have determined that we will ask our ministers for emergency services to review what can be learned from the events of this very, very difficult summer, to provide some advice to COAG on emergency management on the way that disaster payments work, on disaster resilience and the like.
We have also agreed that we will work on the question of gift deductible status for the various charitable funds that have been set up following these natural disasters. As people would be well aware the Premier’s relief appeal in Queensland now has I think around $200 million in it, a very substantial amount of money and in other states, including the state of Victoria, there are charitable funds that have been fundraising to give that extra helping hand. We want to make sure that our taxation system is working in the right way with those funds, we learned some lessons about that from bushfire relief in Victoria following the tragedy of Black Saturday and we want to make sure that those lessons continue to be learned and to apply to these funds.
So I’d thank my colleagues for that discussion, it was very important that as a group we have it at this time.
The other substantial issue on the agenda today was of course the question of health, and we came here today with three objectives: to deliver health reform that would stand the test of time, that was genuine reform that would last; to deal with the structural funding problem facing our health system; and to make sure that we were delivering a better deal for patients.
I can advise that we have secured an agreement which meets these three aims and I thank my colleagues for their patience and diligence in working through that agreement.
My bottom line was that we saw a better deal for patients and my colleagues agreed with me on that bottom line. My bottom line was that I wasn’t going to let politics get in the way of entering a truly national agreement that would last over time and we have secured that agreement.
I want to be clear that in securing this agreement we have held true to the principle that new money should only flow when there is reform and reforms will be made to our health system as a result of the agreement today.
This new deal will deliver unprecedented transparency in our healthcare arrangements. If you want to summarise what we’ve achieved today, we’ve achieved more money, more beds, more local control and more transparency, and we have achieved an agreement which will mean less bureaucracy, less waste and less waiting.
I want to take you through the five elements of what we have agreed today. First, in terms of funding, we have agreed that there will be a guaranteed $16.4 billion in new money from the Federal Government to state and territory governments from now to 2020. This comes on top of what has been agreed to in the Australian Healthcare Agreements, and on top of the $3.4 billion that is being used for elective surgery and emergency departments.
Under this agreement, the Commonwealth will step up to a fair share of growth; 50 per cent of every new dollar coming from the Commonwealth. Over time, my state and territory colleagues have faced a circumstance where the Commonwealth’s share of funding has been declining as a percentage of what they need to run their public hospitals and the Commonwealth was not stepping up to its fair share of growth. Now, as a result of today’s agreement, the Commonwealth will become a 50 per cent partner in growth for the future, that’s important for the long term stability and quality of our healthcare system.
Second, we are boosting transparency. People want to know what is happening with the money that goes in to fund health. They do not want it beyond their line of sight; they do not want to wonder whether when one level of government is stepping up to putting more in, perhaps another level of government is taking some out. As Education Minister I was driven by the principle of transparency, not only because people have a right to know what is happening with funds that are being spent for public purposes like education and health, but because the very transparency itself can drive change. That is if you identify underperformance, you can step in a rectify it, if you identify best practice then you can share that best practice.
So today I can announce that we have agreed that there will be a national funding body which will be a pooled arrangement making transparent funding flows in health. This is a huge step forward and I thank my colleagues for the discussions today. Through this national funding body, we will be able to ensure that hospitals around the nation are transparently and fairly funded, we will also be able to ensure that information between states is truly comparable.
I said the third element, the five elements of this package: funding, transparency – thirdly we are taking a giant axe through red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy. Under the former deal there was an agreement which would have created eight separate bureaucracies that would have risked over time, eight separate approaches to funding and it would have risked over time that information was not truly comparable nationally. As a result of today’s agreement we are sweeping away those eight separate bureaucracies for one national funding body.
Fourth, I have agreed with my colleagues that we will, as a Federal Government, step up in primary care, particularly bringing Medicare locals on stream more quickly than initially envisaged and we will step up to ensure that we are delivering extra assistance for after-hours more quickly than envisaged.
And finally we, through today’s reforms, are dealing with greater community say and local control through the national hospital networks structure. Pivotal to these reforms remains having an efficient price for services that are provided in hospitals because that efficient price will drive change in our hospital system.
Today with my colleagues we have signed a Heads of Agreement on each of these areas, the in detail worked will now happen to bring this Heads of Agreement to a full agreement, but I thank them for signing the Heads of Agreement today.
We have also jointly signed today a national partnership agreement, dealing with targets in emergency departments and elective surgery, and I thank my colleagues for signing that agreement today too.
All in all, I think whilst this has been a very long day, it’s been a very successful outcome.
When we walked into the COAG room we did not have a national agreement on health reform. When we walked into the COAG room there was reason to fear that as time went on the agreements between the Commonwealth and those states that had signed would become increasingly unsustainable in the absence of a national agreement. When we walked into that room today, we didn’t have the benefit of one national funding body for the kind of transparency that I have outlined.
We have walked out of the room having ensured we’ve got one national agreement, transparency, proper funding, local control, new investments in primary care, and less bureaucracy.
For people around the country, this does mean more money, more beds, less waiting time, more access to the healthcare that they want now and into the future.
With those words, I’ll turn to the chair of the Council of the Australian Federation, CAF, and Paul Henderson from the Northern Territory.
CHIEF MINISTER HENDERSON: Thank you, Prime Minister.
I will be brief, but certainly on behalf of all the premiers my colleague the ACT Chief Minister, it was our first time to come together and catch up with the Premier of Queensland and demonstrate out support and commitment as Australians across all levels of government to assist with the rebuilding of Queensland and affected areas.
It’s been a really horrific time across the nation, just watching the impact of the floods unfold, the impact on people’s life, on communities, and certainly, as Australians, we all know people in Queensland directly, indirectly, businesspeople. It has been a tragic, horrific, extraordinary time and today we’ve all come together as leaders from across our nation and said to the Premier of Queensland ‘We are with you. We will work with you and do everything we can to assist in the rebuilding of Queensland and affected areas’, and also, importantly, to learn those lessons.
And, just briefly, as the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, the one comfort that I take out of the extraordinary devastation from Tropical Cyclone Yasi, talking with the Premier of Queensland, it does look as though that the cyclone codes that we actually build to in the northern Australia certainly have stood up very well in terms of homes and businesses that have been built to those codes, and certainly that should give some comfort to people who live in northern Australia, that living in a home that has been built to those codes that have been in place since ’84 or ’85. We wish we’d never had this test, but the fact that we have had the test should give some comfort.
In regards to the historic health reform agreement we have today, as the Prime Minister said, when we walked into that room this morning we did not have an agreement on the table, and at times today it looked as though it was going to be difficult to reach agreement, but I would like to thank all of my colleagues, the Premiers and the ACT Chief Minister, that when we stood back from the issues around the detail, we focussed on patients.
At the end of the day, what we have today is a better deal for patients in our hospital system. It means more beds right across Australia. It means reduced waiting times in emergency departments across Australia. It means reduced waiting times for elective surgery, and importantly for our community, transparency and a line of sight in regards to every dollar that goes into our hospital system – how that relates and reflects on the ground in terms of the care of patients and people in our system.
So, I’d like to thank all of the Premiers and Prime Minister today. My first meeting as the Chair of CAF, but it has been a sign, I believe, that even though that CAF now reflects different political stripes sitting around the table, we can all sit around the table in the national interest and reach agreement, and we’ve done that on health today.
PM: Thank you.
So, we’re happy to take questions. I should have said, of course, that apart from being my first COAG meeting it’s the first COAG meeting for Premier Baillieu, for Premier Giddens, and for Genia McCaffery, representing local government, so this is the Canberra press gallery. They’re not too bad.
Matthew?
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, all the messages that we heard during the day was that the bone of contention, if they’re was one, was your single pool. Were the Premiers simply trying to avoid scrutiny, or what was their reasonable concern, and when you say that you’ve got a heads of agreement rather than an iron-clad deal, what concession have you made?
PM: See what I mean about them?
A heads of agreement is a signed deal. We will now do all of the technical work that needs to be done, all of the work that needs to follow it through. We will be distributing the signed heads of agreement so you can see it yourself.
So, we’ve walked into that room with no national health agreement and we’ve walked out with a national health agreement.
You would expect, when I have been proposing considerable changes to the agreements that a number of States had signed onto, and a new way of thinking about health compared with the proposals of last year, that Premiers and Chief Ministers would want to analyse that, hold it up to the light, ask all of the questions, have all of the debates. I think that absolutely appropriate. That’s what leaders should do and that’s what we’ve been doing in the room today.
But I’m very pleased that we have been able to work through, with a lot of hard work, a lot of respectful dialogue, and get the agreement, a signed agreement on which we will build with a full, detailed agreement when officials have done all of their work.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) measures that you nominated on Friday, as you nominated?
PM: The transparency measures I nominated on Friday are in the signed agreement. I want, and have been very clear with my colleagues, I’m a big believer in transparency. I believe in it because I believe Australians have got a right to the information. I believe in it because transparency drives change, and if you look in this country today, we spend tens of billions of dollars each year on our public hospitals, but we do not have good, real-time information that people can see, and we do not have good line of sight on dollars in and dollars out. We will now have that line of sight. That is a really important reform.
Of course, from the point of view of people in emergency departments and people waiting for surgery, people who want to see a doctor, they are going to say to themselves ‘what is different for me?’ Well, what is different for them is a national agreement, so right round the nation, whether you’re in Perth or Brisbane or Darwin or Launceston or in Sydney, any part of the nation, there’s a national agreement that is applying to your healthcare that’s got more funding, more beds, more transparency and more local control than people have had before.
Yes, we’ll go there and come across. Yes?
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, does that mean that all major elements of the agreement will be ready to roll July 1?
PM: What that means is people will start to see real changes on July 1. Many of the elements of this agreement, building, as they do, on the shoulders of the agreement that went before, do have a July 1 start date.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, on that, you say more beds, exactly how many more hospital beds will there be, including in the next 12 months, and how many extra people will have elective surgery who weren’t going to have it?
PM: Well, we are working at the moment through the additional $3.4 billion that we provided to assist elective surgery around the country, and that has literally resulted in tens of thousands of additional procedures, and we are able to give people the details of that.
What this agreement means for the long term is there’s more money and growth is not capped. So, in this country, because of the approach of the Federal Government, and this has been a problem a long time in the making, and it was certainly there under the former government, in this country we’ve seen a declining share from the Federal Government. We’ve seen a capped amount of funds. If States and Territories were in a position to lift activity beyond the cap they had to pay for it. There was no more extra Federal money.
Now, we are moving to a system where we are partners in growth – 50 per cent, 50 per cent, the system growing as it needs to. That’s a transformational change.
JOURNALIST: How many more beds?
PM: As the agreement is implemented, obviously, beds will come on line. What I can give you is I can give you the statistics about what the money to date, the difference has made, and it has literally been in tens of thousands of additional procedures in elective surgery.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, we were told 10 months ago, with great fanfare, that there was an agreement when in fact there was none. There was a lot of hyperbole. We’re being told that there’s an agreement today, but we’re also being told that it’s not a full agreement. If I could ask you to allow the Premiers and Chief Ministers to talk, what are the caveats and or conditions that have been placed on signing a final agreement?