Patricia Hewitt Quotes (33 Quotes)

So there clearly is a sense in which the Labour Party here, certainly at State level is reaching out and connecting with people and reflecting the aspirations and needs of, you know the mass of ordinary Australians.

But getting your party structure right may also be a precondition for getting your policies right.

I very much hope entrepreneurial GPs from neighbouring areas may want to expand,

We want to ask people how services can more effectively promote good health, as well as treat disease, and how we can empower people to have more say in the care they receive in the community and their homes.

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.

Extending prescribing responsibilities is an important part of our commitment to modernize the NHS,

Your health, your care, your say.

Although people are very happy with the service they receive from their GP, they are less happy with access and convenience. Patients are telling us with the health service, you either see your GP or, out-of-hours, go to accident and emergency. We need to make sure that GP surgeries become more accessible.

The Health Bill will include a ban on smoking in enclosed workplaces and public places which will cover 99 percent of the workforce,

We are monitoring the situation literally day by day, ... We will review the funding in the light of this work.

We are trying to find out what patients need, rather than what it suits us to provide. And the people are saying 'We want services to work together.' They ask 'Why do I have to tell my story over and over again to different people why can't I see the same person, or if that's not possible, why can't they pass the information on to other people.'

And I hope very much that the ALP will become increasingly engaged in the international discussions that are taking place amongst centre-left parties generally.

A modern health and social care system has to be completely focussed on the needs of its users.

I suppose the one very striking thing, you know, to a British observer is the fact that Labour is in power in every State in Australia.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

There is total agreement on 99 percent of the policy. On the 1 percent, not only in government but I think across the country, there was real disagreement,

Well I think all I would say on that is, when we were in opposition in Britain and Hawke and then Keating were in power here, Labor was in power here, we learnt a huge amount from the ALP's experience here.

The 2 million people who work in the NHS and social care are also themselves patients and users. I know they all want to treat patients and users the way they and their families would want to be treated and that is the purpose of our reforms.

I have very real concerns about the civil liberties implications of ultimately requiring every resident to submit themselves for compulsory fingerprinting or some other biometric test.

We're seeing quite a lot of people who really would like a return to class-based politics.

Certainly we know from our own experience how very difficult it is when you've lost an election that perhaps a lot of people were expecting you to win.

But around the idea of a new centre-left, and new progressive politics that can respond, for instance to the globalisation of our economy.

And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.

By expanding traditional prescribing roles, patients can more easily access the medicines they need from an increased number of highly trained health professionals.

I think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more.

We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition.

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

in order to avoid the issuing of redundancy notices at Rover while efforts are made to keep the business together.

You've got to respond to that and of course thinking through the role of a left party in the modern world, in the modern economy and society and having a policy response to that.

You don't repair that relationship by sitting down and talking about trust or making promises. Actually, what rebuilds it is living it and doing things differently - and I think that is what is going to make the difference.

And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

The merger would be against the public interest and should be prohibited,

The accusation that we've lost our soul resonates with a very modern concern about authenticity.