Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian public was promised by the now Prime Minister that there would be no cuts to health. Many people took him at his word. So it came as a great surprise to people in my neck of the woods, out in Mount Druitt, when we learnt, in the first budget statement of the Abbott government, which was MYEFO—the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook—released in December, that $500 million of healthcare investments would be cut. I was particularly outraged that, of that $500 million, a commitment of $6 million, to be invested in the installation of an MRI scanner at Mount Druitt Hospital, had been cut. I had previously asked the health minister informally about the status of that and I found out through MYEFO that it was being cut. I think this is a horrendously bad decision for the people of our area.

I wrote to the health minister. I understand you are not going to get a response as quickly as you would like, but it did take him four months to get back to me. And when I did get a response from him, the response itself, frankly, was of a quality below a health minister. It was engaging in petty politics and point-scoring rather than actually explaining why the Prime Minister's vow of no cuts to health was not being honoured by the Abbott government and by this health minister. What was also interesting, when I finally got the response, was that he not only provided the response to me as an MP, but he decided he would also hand it, behind my back, to my local paper, which was intriguing. They contacted my office and said they had got a copy of the letter. If they did not get it from my office, then where did they get it from? The logical answer is that the health minister decided to play politics instead of actually delivering for the people of my area.

He made two critical errors in his letter. First, he claimed that the decision to grant the MRI Medicare eligibility and provide an MRI machine to Mount Druitt Hospital was a Labor election commitment. Wrong: it was actually a decision of the cabinet made before the election, made before caretaker status, and accounted for in PEFO. It was not an election commitment. Second, he claimed the purchase of the equipment in the public hospital setting is usually the responsibility of the relevant state government. Wrong: as the state government has pointed out, through a spokesperson for the state's health minister, the responsibility for MRI licences was the federal government's, which is absolutely correct. Instead of the health minister playing politics, why doesn't he do the right, decent and honourable thing of honouring an Australian government commitment by making sure that the people of Mount Druitt do not have to travel to Parramatta or Nepean to get health care, ensuring that they get adequate health care and, more importantly, honouring the Prime Minister's commitment of no cuts to health.