Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to Medicare Locals, they created a great, big, new health bureaucracy within Medicare Locals and they distracted money away from doctors and nurses that should have been spent on patients and they put it into these bureaucratic structures.

We have said that we will cut from 61 the number of Medicare Locals down to a number less than 30, and we will get more money back to doctors and nurses so that patients can be seen, not just in primary-care settings but within public hospital settings as well. We are determined to make sure that we can reduce Labor's health bureaucracy, because they trash the health system at a state level. They trashed it at a federal level over the course of the last six years. And it is our job to clean up Labor's mess. We are getting more money to front-line services. Why? Because we have an ageing population and because we are determined to beef up the response at a primary-care level. We will clean up Labor's mess and we will make sure that more money gets back to the front-line health services in this country.

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