Andrew Leigh

I spoke in parliament yesterday about the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority.

National Health Reform Amendment (Independent Hospital Pricing Authority) Bill 2011
31 October 2011

Public hospitals are the cornerstone of Australia's healthcare system. In Australia, if you are seriously sick or badly injured, you can go to your local public hospital and be sure you will be afforded a high standard of care from well-qualified professionals. Australians do not live in fear of medical bankruptcy.

Looking after the wellbeing of Australians is what the Labor Party does. We are, after all, the party that introduced Medibank, under the Whitlam government in 1975. Recreated as Medicare under the Hawke Labor government, it is an everyday reminder of the commitment Labor has to affordable, accessible and quality health care for all Australians. Recently the government reached agreement with all the states and territories for a national healthcare agreement. This followed a comprehensive process to make sure we got health reform right—a process that involved an independent inquiry, an extensive consultation with states, territories, healthcare providers and health experts—because this government cares for the issues that matter most to Australian families.

Australian families want to know that when a member of their family falls sick they can get the help they need from a public hospital irrespective of their circumstances or location. But in meeting that goal we have to continually improve health care. Labor is the party of reform in Australia and this includes making the healthcare system of tomorrow better than the one we have today. Australians need to have the confidence that if they are badly hurt the public hospital system will be there as their safety net.

I was stunned on 12 September this year by an incident in the United States. At a Republican presidential candidate debate, hosted by CNN and the Tea Party Express, debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked a hypothetical question about a young man who had failed to buy health insurance. He asked congressman Ron Paul whether the young man should be provided government financed medical care in the event of a serious accident. Blitzer asked Paul: 'Are you saying that society should just let him die?' While Paul hesitated, a number of audience members shouted out, 'Yeah!'

We are fortunate to live in a country where this type of outburst is unthinkable, where there is no question about the role of government in the provision of health care. We know it is the right thing to do and we know it is something we need to get right. Labor's introduction of Medicare has now ensured, decades on, that it is part of the Australian social fabric.

Under the new health agreement, the Commonwealth government will commence by paying 45 per cent of the growth in hospital costs from 2014 to 2015. From 2017-18 that figure will be increased to 50 per cent. There will be a national funding pool so all hospitals will be paid in the same way, whether they be in Bourke or in Ballarat. This will deliver unprecedented transparency to hospital funding arrangements. This transparency will be furthered by the introduction of activity based funding. As one of the key recommendations of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, activity based funding will increase the efficiency of public hospital funding.

This will be a departure from current arrangements. The Commonwealth provides public hospitals with block grants through state and territory governments. These grants are not tied to service provision. Under the new arrangements, they will be overseen by the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, a key institutional reform under the National Health Reform Agreement. It will operate alongside the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and the National Health Performance Authority to ensure that greater transparency drives reform. In practical terms this will mean more beds, more local control, more transparency, less bureaucracy, less waste and less waiting.

As the dad of two little boys who always seem to be falling and hitting their heads, I have spent many hours sitting in emergency departments dealing with everything from concussion to gastro problems. I know the stress that builds up while you are sitting in that emergency room waiting for service. It is imperative that we do what we can to cut hospital waiting times, to make sure that those who are in urgent need of attention get it. Equally important is ensuring that those people whose requirements are less pressing are provided with quality care outside the hospital system. We should get the people who need quick access to hospitals in as quickly as we can but also ensure that those who do not need a hospital are not using the hospital facilities and putting pressure on them.

The Independent Hospital Pricing Authority will operate as an umpire, setting a price for the growth in hospital services and providing the government with advice on their implementation. As agreed at COAG, the new national approach to activity based funding will commence from 1 July 2012. The record investment in public hospitals of an additional $19.8 billion over 10 years will see the Commonwealth paying 50 per cent of the efficient cost of growth in hospital costs.

The key here is that the Commonwealth funding will be based on the nationally efficient price, not a blank cheque to the states and territories. Finding efficiencies to healthcare delivery can have real results. In his book Super CrunchersIan Ayres tells the story of American paediatrician Don Berwick who set out to save 100,000 lives. He based his grand aim on the fact that about that many people died each year in the United States due to preventable medical errors. Berwick did not go looking for radical changes or surgical advances. He simply looked at common complications and procedures—procedures such as preventing lung infections from ventilators by elevating the head of a hospital bed, cleaning a patient's mouth to reduce the spread of infection and using rapid response teams to rush to a patient's bedside at the first sign of trouble. Surprisingly, his most effective suggestion was to introduce systematic hand washing. Systematic hand-washing campaigns in hospitals reduce the risk of certain infections by more than 90 per cent. This statistic guided Berwick's pathway to save these lives.

I commend the Minister for Health and Ageing for last week announcing that the MyHospitals website will now publish infection rates. That will be another way of ensuring that transparency drives local reform. In addition, a nationally efficient price means that those types of medical errors—errors that inevitably require patients to get additional care, to use precious hospital beds for longer—will become even more costly for hospitals. There will be a financial incentive for hospitals to reduce the rate of medical errors because they will become a real cost burden on hospitals that do not tackle medical errors.

By providing independent advice to the government on the efficient costs of such services as well as developing systems to support activity based funding for such services, the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority will significantly improve the monitoring of the performance of our healthcare system. Under this bill the authority will also calculate block funding amounts for hospitals not subject to activity based funding—something that is especially important for the delivery of health care in regional and rural areas. Small regional and rural hospitals will be protected under the new financing arrangements proposed in the bill.

This government is committed to funding health services so that all Australians, regardless of where they live, have access to great health care. Where activity based funding is not appropriate, the block funding system will continue. We will make sure that rural and regional hospitals are able to continue to meet their obligations and can deliver high quality patient care. These are the Labor values of equality and fairness in action.

While the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority will provide advice to state and territory governments on the efficient price for procedure and operation of public hospitals, it will not determine the payments made by those governments. The advice will not be binding, and the states and territories will maintain their discretion. The move to activity based funding is a vital reform because it helps ensure that hospital financing can adapt and adjust to changes in service demand. As the demographics of our population change, we have to equip public hospitals with the tools to deliver the appropriate services to the people who need them at the right time. The funding system has to reflect the needs of the community, to be targeted, flexible and responsive to technological advances in the detection and management of illness and injury.

The authority will enable activity based funding to have hospitals adjust to the needs of shifting populations, local demographic characteristics, changing costs of delivering medical services through innovation, and the complexity and location of delivering hospital services. To help public hospitals meet the challenge of shifting demands, the authority will play a role in determining what constitutes a public hospital service. It will provide assessments and recommendations in relation to the resolution of disputes between governments over cost-shifting and cross-border funding arrangements. Cross-border issues are a major challenge for the ACT, with Canberra Hospital serving a much wider region than the ACT.

In the interest of openness and transparency the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority will be required to publish its advice and other information. That will help inform decision makers in relation to the funding of public hospitals. In establishing national governance agencies and a performance and accountability framework, this government has shown that it is are serious about delivering an effective and efficient public hospital system—one that meets the demands of the future and gives Australian taxpayers value for money.

To support the work of the authority two advisory committees will be established: the clinical advisory committee and jurisdictional advisory committee. Those committees will provide advice to the authority on developing and specifying classification systems for healthcare and other services. The clinical advisory committee will consist of a chair and eight members, all of whom are clinicians. The jurisdictional advisory committee will also provide advice to the authority on a range of matters, including: adjustments to the nationally efficient price to account for variations in delivering health care, advice on the standards and requirements in relation to the provision of data by state and territory governments, and funding models for public hospitals. Under the guidance of the nine members of the authority and the support provided by the authority's advisory committees, it will be well advised by people with extensive clinical and professional expertise in the vital role it will fulfil.

The public hospital system is something we almost take for granted in Australia. We take it for granted that it is our right as Australians that if we are sick we can go to hospital and we will get that treatment. It is a right that Australians have come to expect and do expect, but it is something that does not come easy. Through the authority and other reforms under the National Healthcare Agreement, this government is taking an active role in ensuring healthcare providers deliver quality health care. The reforms have not been easy and we have had to make some tough decisions along the way, but we have taken the responsibility for bringing about a landmark agreement.

It is important to recognise healthcare reform in context. This is not just great healthcare reform, it is also great economic reform. Just as the Labor governments of the 1980s put in place macroeconomic reforms, such as floating the dollar and tariff cuts, and the Labor governments of the 1990s put in place vital microeconomic reforms, such as competition policy and enterprise bargaining, so too the Labor government of today is putting in place the next wave of reform—that is, reforms of public sector productivity, making sure that schools and hospitals work better. We are not only ensuring this is done transparently through the My School and My Hospital websites, but we are also ensuring that Australians get the best deal out of their public services. In the case of health we want to know that when we become sick, the dedicated staff from our local public hospital can do their job to provide the care our family and friends need at the time when it is needed most. I commend the bill to the House.

Success has many parents, but having moved a private members' motion in parliament a few months ago asking for CHOGM to focus on polio, I'm chuffed to see the PM today announcing $50 million to eradicate the disease in the four countries where it remains endemic: Afghanistan, Nigeria, India and Pakistan.

Getting rid of the final few cases will take ingenuity. In a speech earlier this year, I quoted former Economist journalist Robert Guest, writing in 2004:

‘Somalia has no government, unless you count a “transitional” one that controls a few streets in the capital, Mogadishu, and a short stretch of coastline. The rest of the country is divided into warring fiefdoms. Warlords extract protection money from anyone who has money to extract. Clans, sub-clans, and sub-sub-clans pursue bloody vendettas against each other, often fighting over grudges that pre-date the colonial period. Few children learn to read, but practically all self-respecting young men carry submachine-guns.

‘I was at one of the country’s countless road blocks, on a sandy road outside Baidoa, a southern town of shell-blasted stone walls and sandy streets. The local warlord’s men were waving their Kalishnikovs at approaching trucks, forcing them to stop. Many of the trucks carried passengers perched atop the cargoes of logs or oil drums. The men with guns then ordered all the children under five to dismount and herded them into the shade of a nearby tree. There, they handed them over to strangers with clipboards, who squeezed open their mouths and fed each one a single drop of polio vaccine.’

Robert Guest is describing vaccination work carried out by the World Health Organisation, which decided that working with local warlords to distribute polio vaccine was the lesser of two evils.

Don Aitkin's term as chairperson of the National Capital Authority wrapped up yesterday. A true Canberra icon, Don has brought a great deal of energy and experience to the NCA, and I'm sure he'll be greatly missed.

Shelly Penn, who has been serving on the NCA's board, will step into the role of acting chairperson.

Noting the absence of bike racks near my office on 1 Torrens Street, I wrote to the ACT Government to ask whether they'd consider installing one. This week, I received a letter from Simon Corbell, saying that they'll be putting a bike rack nearby. So if you're coming to an event or meeting in my office, you'll soon be able to lock up your bike close by.

(Cross-posted on the ALP blog, which is the place to leave comments.)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen tells Alice: ‘Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

I was recalling this line the other day when thinking about the task faced by Tony Abbott. Here are the six impossible things that the Opposition Leader has to believe before breakfast every day.

Impossibility 1: That a price on carbon pollution won’t change behaviour. Once upon a time, Liberals used to believe in the power of prices. Now, they take a selective approach. When it comes to the effect of the exchange rate on import prices and the impact of income taxation on the price of work, they contend that prices matter. But when it comes to carbon, the Opposition must believe the impossible: that companies won’t reduce their pollution when we put a price on it.

Impossibility 2: That mining companies pay too much tax. In August, BHP posted a $23 billion profit – the largest in Australian history. As the Henry Tax Review acknowledges, Australia’s royalty tax regime is both inequitable and inefficient. That’s why Labor is moving towards a profit-based tax on the minerals that are the birthright of every Australian. It’s only Mr Abbott and his naysaying Liberal-National team who think that mining companies are paying enough tax.

Impossibility 3: That WorkChoices will raise productivity. The current decline in productivity growth began about a decade ago, about midway through the Howard Government’s time in office. In the WorkChoices era, the productivity growth rate continued to fall. As the Grattan Institute’s Saul Eslake pointed out at a conference run by the Reserve Bank of Australia: ‘the workplace relations reforms introduced by the Howard Government under the title “WorkChoices” in its last term in office were not, primarily, “productivity-enhancing”.’ Mr Abbott likes to claim that WorkChoices is ‘dead, buried and cremated’. But it’s increasingly looking like he pickled his favourite bits before burying the rest.

Impossibility 4: That Australia could’ve gotten through the GFC without taking on debt. When an economic downturn hits, it has two impacts on the budget. First, revenues fall as governments get lower company tax receipts, less income tax, and less GST. Second, smart governments engage in fiscal stimulus – stepping in to keep people in jobs and businesses afloat. In the 2008-09 downturn, two-thirds of the cost to the budget came from lower revenues, while one-third came from fiscal stimulus. In total, we took on debt less than a tenth of national income – a small fraction of the debt loads in most developed countries. When you hear Liberal and National Party members arguing that Australia shouldn’t have gone into debt, they’re not only saying that we shouldn’t have had fiscal stimulus. They’re also contending that when a downturn hits, the government should start cutting back. That’s either an economic recipe for disaster, or just another impossible claim.

Impossibility 5: That Australians are saving enough for retirement. When the Keating Government introduced universal superannuation in the early-1990s, some Liberals denounced it as an unwarranted impost on businesses. Two decades later, universal superannuation has become part of Australia’s social fabric. But in a ‘Groundhog Day’ moment, the Opposition are currently opposing an increase in the minimum superannuation contribution from 9% to 12%. What’s particularly ironic about this is that every member of parliament elected since 2004 are covered by an agreement that sees us receive 15% superannuation contributions. Impossibly, Liberal-National Party members of parliament believe that 15% is good enough for them, but 9% is sufficient for their constituents.

Impossibility 6: That parliament isn’t working. Since the last election, the Gillard Government has passed more than 200 Bills through the House of Representatives and nearly 150 through the Parliament. That’s more than the Howard Government in the same amount of time. At the same time, the Opposition are bereft of policy ideas, and staring at a $70 billion hole in their costings. As the White Queen said to Alice: ‘The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.’ Perhaps that will be the basis on which Mr Abbott draws up his next election costings.

Australia can’t afford to be caught in Tony Abbott’s ‘wonderland’ where truth yields to nonsense. It’s time for the Opposition Leader to give up his six impossibilities, and join the conversation about how to build a better future for Australia.

Ben Donohoe, the son of a staff member at Hawker College, was only 9 years old when he passed away from a brain tumour in 2005. Since then, the students of Hawker College have been organising an annual charity fun run to raise money for the ACT Eden-Monaro Cancer Support Group and Make-A-Wish Australia. Now in its 7^th year, the Ben Donohoe Run and Walk for Fun event will be held on Sunday 6^th November, at Lake Ginninderra.

I’m going to be pounding the pavement with 10 of my staff and friends to help add to the $220, 000 that has already raised for this important cause.  If you’d also like to be part of the action you can register online here, or you can make a donation here.

What: Ben Donohoe Run and Walk for Fun

Where: John Knight Memorial Park, Lake Ginnindera

When: Registration from 7.30am – 8.30am, Sunday 6^th November 2011

You can find more information on the event website.

Hope you can make – please feel free to swing by my marquee and say hello if you do!

I attended the opening of eight new social housing units in O'Connor this morning. The bottom four units will be occupied by people with mobility impairments, while most of the top four units will be single parent families. For some of the tenants, it's the first place they've ever had to call their own.

SENATOR THE HON MARK ARBIB

Minister for Indigenous Employment and Economic Development

Minister for Sport

Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness

ANDREW LEIGH MP

Member for Fraser

MEDIA RELEASE

28 October 2011

EIGHT NEW SOCIAL HOUSING DWELLINGS IN CANBERRA

Vulnerable people in Canberra will benefit from a new social housing development opened today, supported with $1.6 million from the Australian Government.

Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness Mark Arbib and Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh today welcomed the opening of the new development in David Street, O’Connor, which will offer safe and secure homes for people in need.

“This development will provide a stable home for seniors, people with disabilities and people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness,” Dr Leigh said.

“It features eight two-bedroom units, four of which are Class C Adaptable, which means they are easily modified for tenants with a disability.

“The units incorporate six-star energy rating and environmental design principles such as an underground rain water tank and gas boosted solar hot water units.

“I would like to thank the ACT Government for their involvement in the development and management of this housing development.

“Through this development, we are helping to reduce homelessness, and we are giving vulnerable people in Canberra a better future.”

The development, worth $2.1 million in total, is partly funded through the Australian Government’s Social Housing Initiative, which is designed to assist low income Australians who are homeless or struggling in the private rental market.

The Australian Government’s $5.6 billion investment under the Social Housing Initiative represents the single largest investment in social housing ever undertaken by an Australian Government.

Senator Arbib welcomed the new development which will provide security to some of the vulnerable people in Canberra in need of a home.

“These wonderful new homes will give some of our most vulnerable a place to call home,” Senator Arbib said.

“Under the Social Housing Initiative, around 19,600 homes are being constructed across the nation and will be completed by June 2012 – over 16,400 of these have already been completed.

“In the ACT, the Australian and ACT Governments are working together to deliver 421 new homes – 419 of which have been completed.

“Through the Initiative, the Australian Government has supported more than 15,000 jobs nationally, and helped shield Australia from the recession that hit most other economies.”

The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) has elected 26 new fellows. Bizarrely, they've including a sitting politician. Have they no standards?

(On a more serious note, I'm chuffed to be joining in the same cohort as Lisa Hill, who taught me in my undergraduate political science degree, Stephen Bell, who marked my undegraduate honours thesis in 1994; and former ANU colleagues Dave Chalmers, Hal Hill, Jeff Bennett, Kaarin Anstey and Andrew Podger. Thanks too to my nominators - who I'll refrain from naming in case they'd like to maintain anonymity.)

For the past six months I’ve been lending out my marquee to community groups. It’s been very popular, and has been used to assist causes as diverse as motorcycle awareness and the Mount Rogers Explorer Day. Now I’ve got a small public address system which I’d be happy to lend to any community group that needs a bit of amplification. It’s simple to use, operates off a rechargeable internal battery (or mains power), and it comes with a microphone. It’s ideal for addressing small gatherings - indoor or outdoor. Phone 6247 4396 or email me at Andrew.Leigh.MP<AT>aph.gov.au to book either the marquee or the PA system for your event.

And while I'm talking about community groups, I’m also opening up a spot in my newsletter, the modestly-named Leigh Report, as a noticeboard for organisations that are seeking to expand their membership. It could be an appeal for volunteers or it could be a shout out to like-minded Canberrans who just don’t know you exist. Email the contact details of your organisation and a one-sentence summary of who in the community you’re trying to reach to Andrew.Leigh.MP<AT>aph.gov.au and I’ll try to include it in the next newsletter.

I've written and spoken before about the power of information to improve public services. So it's beaut to see that the MyHospitals website will from today contain information on hospital infection rates.