Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister's promise that there would be 'no cuts to health'. This week the Prime Minister cut $80 billion out of schools and hospitals. Can the Prime Minister guarantee that no hospital wards will be shut, no doctors or nurses will be sacked and emergency department waiting times will not blow out as a result of your broken promises?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The premise of the question is simply untrue. Every dollar of savings in health is being reinvested in the medical research fund that will give us the treatments and the cures that our country and our world needs in the years and the decades to come. It is true that pie-in-the-sky promises that were made by the former government do not bind this government. We made that absolutely crystal clear before the last election. We all know that the former government tried to booby trap our fiscal future by making completely unsustainable promises for the out years. The first of those out years is now in the forward estimates period, and I have to say that, in that final year, spending will increase. Spending will continue to increase but it will do so at a sustainable rate, not the absolutely unsustainable rate contained in the pie-in-the-sky promises, the undeliverable pie-in-the-sky promises, that the Labor Party gave before the election.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I seek leave to table the budget documents that show there is an $80 billion cut to health and education.

Leave not granted.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I would like to commend her on the excellent job that she is doing. Minister, what steps has the government taken to deliver an effective and sustainable aid budget?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the member for Wannon for his question. And that is quite a career enhancing move, I must say. I appreciate his words of support. This government will deliver an aid program that the nation can responsibly afford in the context of Labor's legacy of record debt and deficit. We have stabilised the aid budget at $5 billion a year. It is projected to increase according to the consumer price index from 2016. This means that Australia remains one of the top 10 aid donors in the OECD world. In fact, we are second only to Japan in our region. Shortly, I will be announcing a new approach to the way we deliver aid. This new framework will comprise performance benchmarks and mutual obligation partnerships so that the Australian taxpayer can be confident that under this government aid will be delivered effectively and efficiently, and results driven with real outcomes.

Gone will be the days when Labor would make a big announcement about an increase in the aid budget and then, when no-one was watching, they would rip money out to plug holes in their blow-outs elsewhere. In the last 15 months of Labor, $5.7 billion was ripped out of the aid budget. They were misleading people into believing that they were going to meet a target of 0.5 per cent of gross national income. That was a deliberate deceit. They were never going to do it. Gone are the days when the Labor government—

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Isaacs is warned!

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

would take $375 million in 2012 and $375 million in 2013 and rip it out of the aid budget to plug the hole in the border protection budget—

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney will desist!

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

because they could not afford the onshore processing costs.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You cut $7.6 billion!

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney is warned!

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They made themselves the third largest donor of foreign aid under the Australian aid budget—the Labor government themselves.

What concerns me is that the shadow minister for foreign affairs is still in absolute denial. She is putting out a press release assuming that Labor is going to put $16 billion of additional funding into the aid budget. I would like the Leader of the Opposition to tell us tonight: where is that $16 billion coming from for the aid budget? What programs are you cutting, or is it just more borrowings?

I am not prone to quoting Labor's last foreign minister—you are not likely to hear me say it often—but I think the shadow foreign minister should well heed the words of Bob Carr when he said, 'The truth is you can't run aid on borrowings.' Only this government will deliver an affordable, sustainable, responsible aid program.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister. As the budget papers show, this week the Prime Minister has cut $80 billion out of health and education. Today it has been reported that, as a result of this decision, 250 subacute beds will close in Victoria this year and the Victorian Minister for Health has said cuts will likely mean 'hundreds of millions and likely billions of dollars' being cut. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for the consequences of his cuts and his broken promises?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We said pre-election that we would not be bound by Labor's pie-in-the-sky promises for the out years. We absolutely said that. We made it absolutely crystal clear that borrowing to make unsustainable, unaffordable promises simply was not on. We have made it crystal clear in the budget that in 2017-18 there will be a lower rate of increase in health and hospital spending. We have made that absolutely crystal clear—

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A cut!

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A cut!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not a cut; a lower rate of increase. We were absolutely upfront about this pre-election, and we have been absolutely upfront about this in the budget.

I appreciate that some of the state premiers are unhappy about this. I appreciate that. I should also point out that they are very happy about the infrastructure spending in the budget, and, yes, as far as the states are concerned there are swings and roundabouts. There are some things that they do not like; there are some things that they do like. But what we have done is given them at least three years to prepare, and I am looking forward, through the federation white paper process, to a constructive and collegial dialogue to improve our federation and to try to ensure that the states and territories are sovereign in their own spheres.