Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for his question. As he well knows, we are in a negotiation phase with the states over the healthcare agreements. We are having intensive negotiations over a range of extensive reforms—something that the shadow minister’s predecessor refused to do. I have no intention at all of flagging in this place or publicly the sort of funding that we might in our negotiations be discussing with the states.

I can assure the member opposite that the one thing we will not be doing in our negotiations with the states is pulling a billion dollars out of public hospital funding. I have to wonder, particularly with this shadow minister, who spent so much of the last term in government doing over working people with Work Choices, whether he did not bother to take any time or pay any—

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