Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for his question. I can inform him that over the life of the current health care agreements the Commonwealth will provide $42 billion to the states for public hospital services, which is a 17 per cent real increase over the previous agreements. That $42 billion includes $8 billion for public hospitals in Queensland, which is a 21 per cent real increase. The Commonwealth has increased its funding. Let us give credit where it is due: the states have also increased their funding. In fact, the states have increased their funding more. The Leader of the Opposition likes to attack the blame game but one thing the blame game has done is that it has shamed the states into finally spending what they need to spend on their public hospitals. Thanks to this increased spending there are now 54,000 public hospital beds in this country. There are now 2,400 more public hospital beds than in 2004.

The Leader of the Opposition might think we are living under the jackboot heel of Howard’s ‘Brutopia’ but at least we have got more hospital beds, thanks to the policies of the Howard government. The Leader of the Opposition said the other day:

Remember I worked in Queensland from ’88 really until ’96 ... purely on schools, hospitals, water, environment, land rights, law and order—that was the bread and butter of my daily life ...

He is turning his back now because he does not like to be reminded of the silly things he has said. He said:

The thing about state governments is that ... people legitimately demand performance ...

I thought: how was this golden age of Christian socialism in Queensland? I discover that when the Leader of the Opposition was the de facto Premier of Queensland, three operating theatres at the Princess Alexandra Hospital were closed in August 1994 and three operating theatres at Royal Brisbane Hospital were closed in November 1994. Between 1989 and 1995 ‘Premier Rudd’, as he thinks of himself, closed 2,200 hospital beds in Queensland.

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