Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Dunkley, who fought hard for and helped deliver a new MRI licence for Frankston Hospital. One of the things, though, that he is concerned about is the impact of electricity prices driven by state Labor policies on Victoria's hospital system. The Andrews government deliberately drove out of Victoria that state's lowest cost base-load power station and, in so doing, they deliberately drove up the price of electricity for pensioners, for seniors, for families, for businesses—but especially for hospitals. We know this from a report in last week's TheAge headlined, 'Victorian hospitals and health services reeling from electricity price bill shock'. What does that mean? It means that Health Purchasing Victoria has identified a $44 million hit on the ability of Victorian hospitals to fund vital services due to the increase in prices coming from the Hazelwood power station being deliberately pushed out of operation by Labor policy.

This, of course, is not just state Labor policy, it's also federal Labor policy—and the impacts are very clear. We've heard that Cobden Health, for example, has been hit with a near-doubling in its electricity prices following the closure of the Hazelwood power station. And what does the CEO of Cobden Health, Leonie Rooney, say? She's made it clear that these higher electricity prices will threaten their physiotherapy services, their rehabilitation services, their exercise programs. These are real world consequences of Labor's deliberate policy to increase electricity prices.

By comparison, on our watch, we took steps, which were fought every step of the way by Labor, to bring about the largest reduction in electricity prices in Australian history. We voted for it. They voted against it. What that means, though, is that while we are reducing pressure on electricity prices, they are deliberately increasing their pressure at the state level and at the federal level. And if you want to know what they propose to do at the federal level, let us just remind ourselves: 'ALP's $600 billion Carbon Bill'.

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