Well done to Premier Anna Bligh for promising to break up Queensland Health in the wake of the fake Tahitian prince scandal (Queensland Health to be abolished “as we know it”):

Premier Anna Bligh has announced plans to abolish Queensland Health “as we know it” in the wake of a fraud scandal.

Ms Bligh told reporters Queensland Health would be split into two separate agencies, one focused on frontline services and the other focused on corporate services.

I’m unsure if the Premier has this in mind, but it would be great if the corporate services part of Queensland Health, to be called the Health Services Support Agency, is subject to competition from private providers of corporate services. Indeed, why not put all the corporate services functions out to tender? Of course, given the significant loss of public service jobs that would entail I hardly expect that to happen.

But this latest scandal at Queensland Health should prompt some deep thinking about whether our public service bureaucracies should be exposed to some market competition to ensure they deliver high quality services to the public.