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Published on: 8/26/2007
Last Visited: 10/8/2007
Reporter : Laurie Oakes
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Mr Abbott talks to SUNDAY's political editor, Laurie Oakes.
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LAURIE OAKES: Mr Abbott, welcome to SUNDAY.
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LAURIE OAKES: Now in this talk of postponing or cancelling the Melbourne Cup, things are serious.Is there any further action that can be taken to deal with this outbreak of horse flu?
TONY ABBOTT: My understanding, Laurie, is that the Federal Government, the state governments and the industry are working very cooperatively together and this 72-hour horse standstill order is certainly unprecedented and it is a sign of just how seriously it is being taken.
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LAURIE OAKES: What about APEC, what are the implications there?
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LAURIE OAKES: I mean, can the security of these leaders be guaranteed without mounted police?
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LAURIE OAKES: Now is this purely a problem for horses or are there wider health implications?
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LAURIE OAKES: Do we know yet how the virus got into the country?
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LAURIE OAKES: Alright, well the big story in your area is the Labor Party's hospital plan.It is proving pretty popular, isn't it?
TONY ABBOTT: Again, it is too early to say, Laurie.
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The issue, Laurie, is not who runs hospitals, it is how they are run and the problem with public hospitals is that they are very complex, difficult, important institutions and the last thing you want to see is upheaval in a system which is so important for so many people.
LAURIE OAKES: I will deal with that in a minute.
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LAURIE OAKES: You are pretty critical but apart from a tin pot little plan to buy votes by propping up one little hospital in a marginal seat , what is the Coalitions' policy?
TONY ABBOTT: Well this is quite a significant plan Laurie because we …
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LAURIE OAKES: The Rudd plan or your plan for one little hospital?
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LAURIE OAKES: Can you name one expert in running hospitals who thinks it is a good ideal to have two intensive care units 50 kilometres apart?
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LAURIE OAKES: But the experts devised the plan that would give northern Tasmania one good hospital with everything, that is the kind of planning that the Howard Government normally advocate?
TONY ABBOTT: But their plan effectively deprived one community of a comprehensive public hospital and a plan which suits the experts isn't necessarily a good plan, Laurie, if it effectively rips off the local community, and that is what happened.
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LAURIE OAKES: So are you guaranteeing that the Mersey Hospital will have a high-class intensive care unit under the new plan?
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LAURIE OAKES: What will the Mersey Hospital have?
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LAURIE OAKES: But there is no intensive care unit there now is there?
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LAURIE OAKES: But that will not be of the same standard as the hospital 50 kilometres away.Is that what you are saying?
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And that is the whole point, Laurie, it's not who owns the public hospitals, it is not who runs them, it's the level of services and the Rudd plan for public hospitals, apart from the potential for chaos, is not going to deliver a single extra bed, a single extra doctor, a single extra nurse or a single extra service.
LAURIE OAKES: Well he says it will produce extra beds but …
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LAURIE OAKES: He can.He says a large part of the problem in our hospitals is that there are patients occupying hospital beds who should be in aged care facilities.They're not because the Federal Government doesn't fund them, does fund enough.He's put it right back on you and your policies.
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But the point is this, Laurie, the number of aged care places has increased from 145,000 in 1996 to 210,000 today.There has been a massive expansion in aged care places.There's also been the step-down program to build extra facilities for people who are not sick enough to stay in hospitals but are too sick to go home and the transition care program to fund extra places for people in that category.
LAURIE OAKES: But isn't it true there is an estimated 2,300 public hospital beds occupied by elderly patient who have been assessed suitable for aged care?
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LAURIE OAKES: Is that figure accurate now?
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LAURIE OAKES: Well Kevin Rudd has promised another 2000 additional aged care beds to free up 2000 acute care beds in hospitals.
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LAURIE OAKES: In that case why are there 2300 elderly patients in hospital that shouldn't be there?
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LAURIE OAKES: Isn't a national policy for hospitals throughout the country better than a few one-off deals in shaky seats?
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LAURIE OAKES: I'm sorry, I had a forgotten all those perfect hospitals under Liberal State governments.
TONY ABBOTT: Well that's a fair point and there is no perfect way to run public hospitals because public hospitals, Laurie, are difficult things to manage, but the last thing you need is someone waltzing in thinking he knows everything, but really making it up on the run and suddenly turning the administration of 750 public hospitals on their heads.
LAURIE OAKES: How do you make it up on the run when he says that through the COAG process, in other words in consultation with the states, a national plan will be worked out.
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LAURIE OAKES: Because it is to be worked out in the first 100 days of the Labor Government.
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LAURIE OAKES: But he has set out the goals to be achieved by that and how he would do that, carrot and stick, financial incentives to get state cooperation and a threat of a takeover if they don't.
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LAURIE OAKES: And 2300 more beds.
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LAURIE OAKES: So your hospital systems were being managed quite well.
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LAURIE OAKES: But let's look at the overall problem, which you saying is that we have dreadful hospital systems throughout the States.Your government has got no plan to fix that or to change it?
TONY ABBOTT: Well what we want to do Laurie, before we rush in is to say can we be confident that a different model of public hospital governance will work and that's why at the Mersey we are proposing a Commonwealth-funded community-controlled public hospital.
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LAURIE OAKES: You see it's only a year or so ago you were confident you knew what model we should have.
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LAURIE OAKES: From the Prime Minister ...
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LAURIE OAKES: So when you made those statements you hadn't thought it through?
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The result of the discussion, Laurie, and I'm quite capable of learning from discussion, the result of the discussion is that this is a very complex field and if you're going to move forward you should do it cautiously and incrementally and that's what the Howard Government is doing.The Mersey is the first step.It's not necessarily the last step.
LAURIE OAKES: So that could lead to a Federal takeover of the state hospital systems.
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LAURIE OAKES: So how long will it take to see how this goes before you develop a national policy?
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LAURIE OAKES: Mr Abbott, we're out of time.
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