Transcript, Press Conference – Brisbane

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PDF printable version of Transcript, Press Conference – Brisbane (PDF 29 KB)

27 May 2011

Topics: Clinical Infrastructure Funding for Queensland, Plain Packaging of Tobacco, Liberal Position on Plain Packaging of Tobacco, PHI Rebate

Nicola Roxon: I'm delighted to be here today because this is an announcement which is the ongoing investments that the Gillard Government is making in health reform and importantly this is part of our investments in health reform that are looking at the workforce needs of the future, with a very determined and strategic choice when we were first elected, that we needed to plan better for the growing needs of the community, whether it was our doctors, our nurses or our allied health professionals.

And one of the key choices we made was that to train properly the workforce of the future we needed to look at expanding the settings that people could be trained in. Of course we've got a very proud record of our public hospitals training top quality professionals. What we're seeing now from our investments is very strong partnerships with private hospitals, with non-government organisations, with primary care providers and, of course, our partners in the university sector, in that we're expanding very significantly the settings that people can be trained in and I think for our friends from the media to come and see the significance of this hospital, it's pretty plain to people why you would make the most of training in such a facility.

And we've made some early investments, have a look at the training facilities this morning, that are starting to pay off and I'm here today to make part of an announcement that is a further investment here in this hospital but some significant investments across all of Queensland.

The Government is shortly going to be announcing $209 million worth of investments in clinical training facilities. Health Workforce Australia has sifted through many, many applications from organisations who want to step up to provide more training.

Today I'm able to announce that there will be $51 million of those projects allocated here in Queensland to support 35 different projects. One of those projects is right here at Wesley Hospital with an announcement of just over $2 million for some vital infrastructure projects including the building of a new floor which will provide proper medical clinical training facilities here at Wesley Hospital.

We're delighted that our partnerships are already proving so successful and we're very confident that this project will be one that will be well-received by your students and health professionals but, most importantly, by the community and I'm delighted to hear that patients are already very readily accepting Wesley as a training facility and actually, I'm sure, quite enjoy having students in the facility. That's certainly what we hear as we travel around.

Here at Wesley its university - students from universities, including the University of Queensland, Bond University and Griffith University, and its students from across medicine, physiotherapy, nursing and dietetics that will benefit from this investment today.

Today's announcement, including an additional $3.5 million of clinical subsidy support through Health Workforce Australia, will produce an additional 6653 clinical training days. That's quite a precise number, I'm going to hold you to that last 53.

And we are delighted that other investments that we're announcing - I won't go through the entire list but they include, for example, $1.4 million for an expansion of training services in Mount Isa, $4.7 million for a new integrated education and training facility in Cairns, $2.9 million for a training facility in Toowoomba in collaboration with the local health services and their partner universities.

It's very important to our government that we continue to make these investments. We know the infrastructure investments really do - are a down payment for a long term future.

We know that it's good for your hospitals and that means it's good for patients. We know that we need to be able to train our workforce well into the future and our investments, I believe, are starting to pay off and make a difference already both to students and to the patients that will see as they come into the workforce.

So I think pretty good news. I'm delighted that you let us come and visit briefly today before I'm off to the AMA conference to talk to all or many of the nation's doctors who are in town.

I suspect that our friends from the media may want to ask a couple of other questions about this and other matters so please I think this is the best time for us to do that but thank you very much and congratulations to Wesley for their successful application.

Steve: Thank you very much, Minister. On behalf of UnitingCare Health and the Wesley Hospital I'd just like to take the opportunity of personally thanking you for taking time out of your busy schedule here this morning and to have the opportunity to come to the hospital and also see the training in action and it was good to see that we have students down there, medical students as well as nursing and to see the facilities and the investments we've made as a result of receiving the grants from HWA. So, to Mark and [indistinct] I also thank you for your trust in Wesley Hospital and UnitingCare Health, to be able to turn those investment dollars into real training and real action. So once again thank you very much for coming and really do appreciate your time.

Nicola Roxon: Pleasure, thank you, Steve.

Okay, anything from the gentlemen here? It would be nice and easy if you don't have any.

Journalist: How do you plan to put pressure on the LNP to declare tobacco donations?

Nicola Roxon: Look, we are very clear, our Government and the Labor Party is very clear that we don't accept donations from tobacco companies. We made that decision in 2004 and we think it's an appropriate one.

We notice that of course the Liberal and National parties still do receive donations from tobacco companies. In fact, what we were able to reveal yesterday is that 97 per cent of the money that British American Tobacco has spent worldwide last year went to Liberal Party and National Party coffers here in Australia.

So something is going on. British American Tobacco say on their own website that they are only allowed to make political donations in order to influence policies that affect their company.

Now, Mr Abbott says that it's outrageous to suggest that those donations are affecting his judgment but I do point out that there are Liberal leaders across the country who don't support his position on plain packaging and do support the Government.

We've seen Premier O'Farrell support the Labor Government plain packaging plan. We've seen Jillian Skinner, the Health Minister in New South Wales, we've seen David Davis, the Health Minister in Victoria, all Liberal colleagues, coming out and saying they support plain packaging. We haven't heard anything from the Liberal and National parties here in Queensland. We obviously want to know whether they're going to support our measures and their other state colleagues, or whether they're lining up with Mr Abbott to oppose these measures.

Journalist: Is it fair enough for them to wait to see the detail of the legislation?

Nicola Roxon: Well, the legislation has been released. An exposure draft of the legislation has been released for two months. It's been available for consultation. It hasn't been introduced in the Parliament yet but I find it a bit hard to believe that Mr Abbott needs to know what font size the warning's going to be in or whether it's in Times New Roman or Ariel.

You know, this sort of detail is not going to make a difference to whether Mr Abbott votes for this measure or not. I think they are, for some reason known only to them, playing for time and obviously we are interested in the support that we can gather from across the country and I hope that the Liberal and National Party here, Mr Newman no doubt will have a view on this, I hope that he will let us know and let the public know whether they support the Government's measures to introduce plain packaging.

Journalist: Are you aware of claims that a former ambassador to the World Trade Organisation is lobbying Malaysia to oppose the tobacco laws?

Nicola Roxon: Yeah, well, look, these claims were made and put to me last night. I'm not aware, other than those claims being made, that it's happening.
I'm very sure that big tobacco companies will be looking at every possible way they can influence Australia to not take this action. They are worried about us introducing this measure because they know it'll be effective, they know it will affect their profits and we know that means it'll be saving lives.

So this is going to be a pretty significant battle and I feel sure that they will try lots of different methods both here in Australia and elsewhere, to influence it.

I'm very confident though that the Australian public would want the Australian Parliament to make a decision about our laws here in Australia and won't be overly worried if people are trying to, you know, use other countries to raise this issue. We can make our laws. We're confident that we're within our rights to do that and I think the public is, you know, getting quite strongly behind us for this measure.

Journalist: How would you describe the relationship between British American Tobacco and the Liberal Party. Is it a close relationship, would you say?

Nicola Roxon: Well, I think that's a matter you'd have to ask them and the Liberal Party. We know that over the last 12 years or so…

Journalist: But looking at how…

Nicola Roxon: Three million dollars - let me answer your question. That's a lot of money. They say publicly on their website that they use that money to influence decisions that will affect them. Mr Abbott says that's an outrageous suggestion but he can show us very clearly that they're not influencing him by declaring his support for this measure and so far he hasn't been prepared to do that.

Journalist: What do you make of the email stoush between Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull? Isn't it a sort of passive aggressive way of airing their dirty laundry?

Nicola Roxon: Well, the Liberal Party do seem to have a little bit of a thing about e-mails. You know, obviously that is a matter for them. I do think it shows that there are divisions that are brewing and whether it's on turning up for votes, as this particular e-mail was about, whether it's on plain packaging where we've seen backbenchers coming out in support of our measures and then being told that they shouldn't make those comments publicly, by Mr Abbott, whether you see divisions on climate change, it doesn't look like a happy show from the outside.

Journalist: Do you think they could make up?

Nicola Roxon: Look, I'm not going to provide, you know, love letter advice between Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott. That is a matter for them.

Journalist: Is it a growing concern that the rebate, the insurance rebate cuts will push up health premiums and will see people go to public hospitals?

Nicola Roxon: I don't accept the premise. We are trying to make changes to the private health insurance rebate because we want it to continue to be viable for the benefit of Australians who use their private health insurance and, in fact, use it in wonderful facilities like we're standing today but in order to make that sustainable into the future, make sure that low and middle income earners, millions of low and middle income earners continue to have private health insurance, we don't really think that taxi drivers or nurses should be contributing to the cost of my private health insurance. I earn enough money to be able to pay for that myself.

We're putting in a means test which means that couples earning over four million dollars pay for their own private health insurance or singles earnings more than $140,000 or $125,000 should contribute to their own private health insurance.

This is a pretty small change where we're asking the highest income earners to contribute more and we don't believe that that will have any significant impact whatsoever on those who are choosing to use the public or private system.

Journalist: Do you think [indistinct] they're going to lose 3.7 million members, is that valid?

Nicola Roxon: Well, they don't. They don't say that. They made some estimates and were very clear that they're very preliminary effort. Their own chief financial officer said that the projections were really so early to be unable to be used.

But one of the things that they make clear even if you accept their projections, they're not consistent with Treasury projections but even if you accept those, there's a big difference between a few thousand people and the millions of people that the health insurance industry is running around saying will drop out of insurance. They've made these claims before. They've run around saying the sky will fall in. In fact, the opposite happened after the last changes. We've seen the numbers of people taking out private health insurance increase, well over 10 million Australians for the first time ever.

So I'm very confident that private health insurance is a strong and viable matter here in Australia. I think the competition of what you can get with your private health insurance is the key thing that will keep people in insurance and of course it means they come and experience these wonderful facilities and service in a place like this here where we're standing today.

So I think there is a fair amount of hysteria which cannot be justified. When you look closely at the changes that we're making, a small change to the means test will not drive thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people out of health insurance or, if we listen to the Insurance Association, millions of people. Those claims just cannot be sustained.

Ends.