Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I note the minister who spoke then has done what he should do in consideration in detail. You have addressed the questions that were put to you by the shadow minister. We may not always agree with the answers, but you have attempted to systematically go through the problems that were raised in aged care, unlike the Minister for Health, who has not answered a single one of the questions that I asked him. Is there a public process for hospital funding? You have completely failed to answer the questions in relation to your secret task force on public hospitals, what your department was doing in relation to the Commonwealth hospital benefits schedule and what your process is from here on. You have failed to answer the question on Healthy Harold. Here is a health department that has failed to fund this program. Your education minister said, 'No, we didn't cut the program; it was Health.' I asked you a question about it, and you could not even answer that. This budget is a litany of failures of this government and of this minister—a failure to invest properly in prevention, a failure to immediately lift the freeze on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. You were unable to get that through cabinet—still 113 items. The government likes to points to the deals. Deals are not a long-term health plan or a long-term health reform plan; they are settlements of disputes. That is what you have attempted to do: settle disputes. This is not about the damage that you have done to relationships with the AMA or the college. It is about the damage you have done to the healthcare system. I look forward to the government starting to have a proper health reform agenda and a vision for health, rather than just words. (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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