Chris Trevor (Flynn, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Will the minister advise the House of the implications of cutting the forward estimates for health spending?

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Flynn for his question. The House will be aware of the Leader of the Opposition’s vehement rejection of the government’s assertion that he presided over a $1 billion cut to public hospital spending while he was minister for health. I would remind the House of evidence I put to the House yesterday—in fact, the Howard government’s 2003 budget papers—which showed progressive cuts to the projected spending on public hospitals of $109 million, $172 million, $265 million and $373 million and, of course, further advice from the department of health that the final year of the agreement saw a cut of $497 million, all of which was presided over by the then minister for health, now Leader of the Opposition.

I reminded the House yesterday that in the 2003-04 budget papers of the Howard government it was explicitly stated that the reason these cuts were being made was the expected lower patronage of public hospitals because of a shift to private hospitals that would be driven by the private health insurance rebate that the then government was putting in place. All this is in black and white in very clear English on page 179 of Budget Paper No. 2 of 2003-04.

The vehement rejection of this by the Leader of the Opposition, amplified today by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in her point of order on the Prime Minister’s answer a minute ago, raises a very interesting question—that is, when is a cut not a cut? We had cuts to the budget by the Howard government that the then minister for health, who was the person responsible for implementing those cuts, is saying were not actually cuts. It caused me to wonder how the opposition deal with equivalent issues of this kind when they are criticising cuts being made by the government rather than defending what they say were not cuts by their government. This is reasonably significant because the 2003 budget was in fact the last Howard government budget in which there were any significant savings. It is almost seven years since the last Liberal finance minister or shadow finance minister proposed any serious savings.

In the 2008 budget there were substantial savings and in the 2009 budget there were substantial savings. We were criticised for making those savings and, indeed, the opposition has endeavoured to block some of those savings—for example, the cuts to the private health insurance rebate for higher income earners. I came across one interesting example of how the opposition handles these matters when the roles are reversed. It is a National Party press release of 13 May 2008 alleging that country Australia would take a $1 billion hit in Labor’s budget. It says:

…Labor has stripped more than $1 billion from regional and rural Australia.

The primary piece of evidence for this is the cancellation of the OPEL contract for wireless broadband—a $960 million contract that the former government entered into—and one of the key reasons this was cancelled was the Rudd government putting in place a much more comprehensive broadband strategy for all Australians.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Minister for Finance and Deregulation will resume his seat. Just so that it is crystal clear, the member for Bradfield is warned.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not only is he warned but also he should remember that he does not work for Optus anymore. The interesting thing is that, according to the opposition, when they remove $1 billion from forward-spending projections that is ‘an adjustment to the forward estimates’ but when we remove $1 billion from projected forward spending that is stripping $1 billion away, that is vandalism. The Leader of the Opposition, in pointing out the facts to the Australian people that he presided over the stripping away of more than $1 billion from funding for public hospitals, alleges that the government is telling lies. Unfortunately, we have his own government’s budget papers, his own opposition’s approach to equivalent issues when the boot is on the other foot and, more than anything else, the ordinary meaning of the English language. Those all count against him. I would suggest that there is one party to this dispute that is not telling the truth, but it is not the government.