Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As part of the $107 million in health funding cuts that has been inflicted on the Victorian community by the Gillard government, my local health services have to contend with $4.9 million in cuts. The Peninsula Health Care Network is doing its utmost to try and work within this bizarre and unexpected reduction in funding at a time when the population in Victoria, and particularly in the community that I represent, has been growing. What we have seen as a consequence of the Gillard government's health cuts is the closing of 10 short-stay beds at Frankston Hospital.

For those that know anything about the Mornington Peninsula and the south-east of Melbourne, Frankston Hospital has enormous demands being placed on it because of the growing population in the region and the increasing complexity of the case load it is expected to accommodate. These short-stay beds are ordinarily mothballed over the Christmas period and reopened in January. Because of the Gillard government's health cuts, they now will be mothballed well into the year, past Easter. This is putting further pressure on an already very busy and, at times, quite stretched health system on the peninsula. We are seeing signs that the bed closures are causing ambulance delays—and this is on the back of cuts that have impacted the attractiveness of private health insurance, where people have been able to exercise some health choices. This is building up to a perfect storm of added pressure on the health services in our region because the Gillard government cannot manage a budget, affecting the health care of Dunkley residents. (Time expired)