Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Jagajaga for her question. She knows that 77,000 taxpayers in her electorate will benefit from legislation we have put before the parliament right now, to be debated again this afternoon and this evening, which will mean every single one of those taxpayers will get a tax cut on 1 July, not some of them, as was the case under the old plan of five years ago, but every single one of them.

Many of those work in health care, including the terrific Austin Hospital in Heidelberg, in the member's electorate. A second-year nurse, working at the Austin on $75,000 will receive, under Labor's plan, a tax cut of $1,554 a year, around double what they would have received under the old plan. A hospital orderly working at the Austin on $47,000 will receive tax cut of $862 a year, compared to just $58 under the old plan—about $1 a week was what they were getting under the old plan from the five years ago. This is all part of this government's commitment to ensure that middle Australia earn more and keeps more of what they earn.

Australia's hospital staff will also know that their work will be better funded and better supported by the historic agreements struck by the Prime Minister and national cabinet in December last year, an extra $1.2 billion to strengthen Medicare even further, including more urgent care clinics and a commitment to lift the Commonwealth's share of public hospital funding to 45 per cent—billions more into our public hospitals from the Commonwealth than existing arrangements. Those hospital staff at the Austin and at hospitals right around the country know what a struggle it has been to get that level of support. Every day at work, they see, coming through their front door, the consequences of 10 years of cuts and neglect to Medicare, cuts and neglect that were initiated by the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister—

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