Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The government, through the current Australian health care agreement, has agreed to a 7.3 per cent annual indexation factor with the states and territories, resulting in an Australian health care agreement of in excess of $60 billion for the coming five-year period. But beyond that—and I say this to the member for Dickson, if he is interested in the facts as opposed to he and the Leader of the Opposition only being interested in politics—the facts are these: in terms of the national policy partnerships that we also agreed to with the states and territories on preventative healthcare, on emergency departments and on Australian health workforce needs for the future, putting those factors together, you are looking at an overall increase in the Commonwealth’s allocation to the states in excess of 10 per cent.

That constitutes the basis for real investment in the nation’s desire to have a decent health and hospital system for the future. We have put our money where our mouth is, we have embarked upon a reform program and we have said that it must be delivered on the ground through the measures that we have agreed with the states and territories in the various instruments that we have signed with them. That remains our commitment to the future. I would suggest to those opposite, if they were to have any skerrick of credibility on this question, why did they pull money—billions of dollars—out of the hospital system and then turn around opportunistically to accuse the states and territories of failing to run a first-class hospital system in the country? It is easy to do. It is easy to produce your budget bottom line that way—pull the money out of hospitals, pull the money out of the emergency departments, pull the money out of elective surgery. That is what you did year in, year out. The government has a policy of funding reform and functional reform for the future of the hospital system, and this government is proud of its achievements.

See this speech in context