Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I wish the honourable member for Herbert and his colleague back home in his electorate all the very best.

The tragic fact is this: in New South Wales this month, public hospitals are being forced to hold fundraisers to make up for the shortfall in funding that has been left to them by this terrible Abbott government. Over $16 billion has been ripped out of hospitals in New South Wales. That is on top of the $3 billion that has been ripped out by the New South Wales Baird government—$16 billion by the Abbott government and $3 billion by the Baird government. It will take a hell of a lot of cake stalls to fill that hole in hospital and health funding.

You have got to ask yourself: against that backdrop, where are the New South Wales MPs? Are they standing up in their caucus room defending hospitals and health care in New South Wales? Where are the National Party MPs? Where are the regional Liberal MPs? The answer—they are nowhere to be seen.

According to the member for Boothby, somewhere in Canberra today, the health minister is going to stand up and make a new announcement about a new health policy. By my reckoning, that is going to be the fourth policy they have had on health in four months and the fifth since the election. It really seems that they are finding it harder to dump their GP tax than they are to dump their Prime Minister.

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