Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Franklin for her question. Accuracy in budget reporting of Commonwealth funding of public hospitals is extremely important, so I am somewhat distressed at recent disputes as to whether or not that reporting has been accurate. You will be aware that the government has consistently pointed out in recent times that while the Leader of the Opposition was minister for health, more than $1 billion was ripped out of federal government funding of public hospitals. As you will know from his demeanour at the dispatch box, the Leader of the Opposition suggests that this is not true. In fact, he stated that the billion dollars being removed from the public hospital system was in fact removed by the Howard government in the 1996 budget.

I had a look at the 1996 budget papers, because I happen to have them with me here, and in fact the total amount cut from Commonwealth funding for public hospitals—he clearly was not trying—was only about $312 million in the 1996 budget estimates. I also decided that, having had a look at those, I had probably better have a look at the budget papers that applied to the period when the Leader of the Opposition was health minister. I should remind the House that that was from 7 October 2003 to 3 December 2007, and the relevant healthcare agreement for the Commonwealth funding of public hospitals was from July 2003 to July 2008. The 2003 budget papers show that over that relevant period there were in fact significant cuts in projected spending on public hospitals and there were downgrades of the forward estimates for those periods, and I will run through them for you. For 2003-04, a cut of $109 million—

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