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

to move:

That the House:

(1)

notes the recent announcement by the Prime Minister in relation to public hospitals;

(2)

recognises that:

(a)

the Australian Healthcare Agreements finalised under the Howard Government delivered a $10.3 billion funding increase in Commonwealth funding to public hospitals; and

(b)

successive Labor state governments have not delivered the reforms necessary to cut the waste, bureaucracy and lack of funding that is crippling so many public hospitals across Australia, but in particular, in NSW and Queensland; and

(3)

expresses concern that the:

(a)

Government’s plan for public hospitals does not provide sufficient detail or the immediate funding and outcomes needed to help patients now; and

(b)

Prime Minister’s announcement looks more like a new election pitch rather than a policy to honour his last election promise to fix public hospitals, or take them over.

to move:

That the House:

(1)

notes the Prime Minister’s claim to have saved Australia from a recession by forcing Australians to borrow and spend money;

(2)

realises that as a result of this reckless and wasteful spending the budget is expected to be in deficit this year to the level of 4.7 per cent of national income, which will be the biggest deficit for more than 50 years;

(3)

notes that despite such excessive borrowing and spending (the third highest in the OECD), Australia’s unemployment rate rose by more than 18 other OECD countries, many of which engaged in little or no ‘stimulus’ at all;

(4)

realises that Reserve Bank board member, Professor Warwick McKibbin, believes the Government’s spending and borrowing would ‘detract form GDP’ in 2010;

(5)

recognises that the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Professor Martin Feldstein, said in 2002 that ‘there is now widespread agreement in the economics profession that deliberate ‘countercyclical’ discretionary policy has not contributed to economic stability and may have actually been destabilizing’;

(6)

understands that the United States of America’s ‘stimulus’ spending has been far less successful than its proponents anticipated;

(7)

notes that the Howard Government faced potential economic downturns in 1997 and 2000 and did not engage in this type of borrowing and spending;

(8)

appreciates that the Howard Government had a much better understanding of economics, knowing that a fall in interest rates, the oil price, and the value of Australian’s currency together give a boost to Australia’s economy that obviates the need to engage in rampant borrowing;

(9)

acknowledges that the Howard Government inherited $96 billion of Labor debt in 1996, ran budget surpluses every year but one between then and 2007, and paid down Labor’s debt; and

(10)

remembers that economic growth surged and unemployment fell from 8.4 per cent to 4.3 per cent during the term of the former Government.

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