The Commonwealth is pushing to take over main responsibility for funding the public hospital system and to install local networks to run small clusters of hospitals.

''Surely we should start thinking about why a Local Hospital Network in this area doesn't bring together hospitals in Canberra, in Queanbeyan, in Yass and Cooma and to make some sensible, local, community-of-interest decisions for the future,'' Mr Rudd said.

Mr Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon travelled yesterday to Queanbeyan Hospital to announce $632 million would be spent to train a ''record number'' of doctors.

''This represents new money for the system,'' Mr Rudd, who promised the spending would be offset by savings in the May budget, said.

The Government would invest $339 million to double the number of training places from 600 to 1200 annually by 2014 for medical graduates who want to become general practitioners.

There was $145 million to train more specialists, increasing the number of training places from 360 to 900 by 2014.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.