Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spoke in parliament last week on the impact of the Prime Minister's $30 billion cuts to education and what they mean to families in McEwen. For my electorate the Prime Minister's cuts will see one in seven teachers sacked, cut the average school budget by $3.2 million and slash support by about $1,000 per student. For other electorates the impact will be just as bad. The Victorian government estimates the cuts to be the same as sacking 8,000 teachers or 10,000 allied health staff, like psychologists, speech pathologists, welfare workers and physiotherapists.

The Prime Minister's $57 billion cuts to hospitals will be devastating for patients and disastrous for public hospitals. In Victoria alone these cuts are worth $17 billion or the equivalent of closing two major hospitals and dropping some 23,000 elective surgeries each fortnight. Closing two major hospitals, like the Northern Hospital on the edge of my electorate or even the Royal Children's Hospital, would be untenable and disastrous.

Not only that; Medicare is also that understaffed that it is behind in assessing approvals for doctors. An assessment KPI of 28 days has now blown out to over 40. This means that practices like the Whittlesea family practice in my electorate, through no fault of its own—only the incompetence of this government—could be forced to shut down because it cannot access doctors. This is not an isolated case.

The Turnbull government needs to get up and fix this. Our health system is stretched and the cuts will make it worse. When it comes to universal health care only Labor can be trusted with Medicare and only Labor can be trusted to deliver health and education systems. (Time expired)