One of Kevin Rudd's flagship policy platforms is his plans on health.  It is all over his advertising, and he will take any opportunity to claim that "The buck will stop with me".  His fliers boldly say that "Almost every Queenslander I talk to wants our hospitals to work properly - they just want the system fixed"  The coalition has really missed an opportunity thus far in the campaign, by not going all out and flooding the electorate with the following question: How was the system broken in the first place?

To answer this question I suggest we start by looking at the state of Queensland's hospitals during the Bjelke-Peterson years, when they were run by local boards.  I don't think there are many who would disagree with the assertion that the hospitals in queensland were amongst the best in the nation.  In the cities, and in regional areas, queenslanders had access to prompt emergency care, there were few, if any of the horriffic waiting lists we hear all about today, and there was adequate numbers of nurses, GPs and specialists.  What went wrong? This vision of a health system that works, hospitals which don't leave patients waiting for hours in the ambulance outside before they see a doctor, young children who have access to the required specialists who are able to diagnose and fix their problem, rather than leaving them to die an agonising death, seems far away.  But it was less than twenty years ago.  With state revenue far and away above what it was in those days, especially after the introduction of the GST and the state's failure to uphold their agreement to remove stamp-duties, one would have thought healthcare, a vital issue by anyone's reckoning, would have got its fair share.  Along comes Goss.  During the Goss reign of the Goss government, and his senior civil servant, one Mr Kevin Rudd, health saw vast cost cutting measures, as labor thought it was a better idea for it to be run by bureaucrats to the dollar, rather than experts.  The local boards, with members ranging from representatives of the different levels of government, doctors, and local people, was seen to be an inefficient waste by Rudd and his team, and so they were cut.  This also meant that for such things as calculating the number of required beds, hospitals are now assigned on the basis of Queensland demographics.  To use Cairns Base Hospital as an example, the indiginous population is 15%, much higher than the state average, and indiginous people have a much higher requirement for dialisis.  This is not taken into account.

Kevin Rudd's consolidation and cost cutting of QLD health, took power away from the local experts, who know the unique issues facing their region, and given it to bureaucrats in brisbane.  The main priority of this measure was to save money.  Is health really an area we should be saving money on? 

The unfortunate thing about democracy in our country these days is that the party and leader who run the slickest campaign seem to get elected, regardless of failings they have demonstrated in their governing, and any lack of specific ideas for where the country should be heading.  This cannot be seen more clearly than in Queensland.  Every term of the Beattie government demonstrated criminal failures to the people of queensland, whether it be foster children, health, senior members of government embroiled in peadophilia, corruption, and blackmail scandals, etc.  However Teflon Pete was a very slick campaigner, and his coalition opposition have failed dismally in this area.  For this election though, I think it would be great for people to take a moment and think what an election really is.  It is the parties and leaders, applying to us, the people, for a job.  When it comes to health, look at Kevin Rudd's CV, and really think about whether he is the best man for the job, and whether he should be allowed to take his power grab even farther.  Or whether we should revert to the system which worked, and which puts the people who know health, the people who know our regions, and the people who know US, back in charge of our hospitals.

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