Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Sadly, he was unprepared to own up to the truth or the facts as they were outlined by the shadow minister for health, the member nor Ballarat, who, as you well know, Minister, is very accurate in her depiction of your funding arrangements and is very accurate in making very plain your cuts to the hospital system. I know it. I feel it in my communities. And I see it because of the reliance of people in rural and remote parts of Australia on the hospital system. And I know that you think you care, but you don't act as if you do. I think you have got real issues around making sure that the hospital systems are funded properly. You're not prepared to accept the evidence that you've cut $715 million from 2017 to 2020.

In my electorate, Mr Minister, that means $3.2 million from the Alice Springs Hospital, $350,000 from the Tennant Creek Hospital, $450,000 from the Gove District Hospital and $620,000 from the Katherine District Hospital. I'm not sure if you've ever been to any of those hospitals. I suspect you probably haven't. But I know the quality of work they do and the work they provide for our communities. I know how important they are in addressing issues to do with closing the gap in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health because of the nature of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in my communities and how much they rely on the secondary and tertiary care provided by these hospitals. And you, Mr Minister, seem to be not alive to the contributions they make or to the importance of improving their opportunities to provide further and better health care to those people.

Just so you recall: for people who live in remote and very remote areas of this country, mortality rates are 1.4 times that of metropolitan centres. For coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in all areas, the mortality rate is 1.2 to 1.5 times higher than in cities. And diabetes in very remote areas is 2.5 to four times higher. These people rely on the health services that are available to them. In this case in Alice Springs, for example, we've got tremendous physicians, great people doing top work. But they rely on the funding we make available to them, and you, Mr Minister, have decided by the decisions you've taken that the work they—

See this speech in context