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

This Liberal government promised before the last election that there would be no cuts to health and no cuts to education, but the Turnbull government's $80 billion of cuts to hospitals and to schools will be devastating to schools and disastrous for our public hospitals. The $57 billion cuts from hospitals will increase emergency department waiting times, increase elective surgery waiting times and reduce the number of hospital beds across the country, and prior to Christmas, in his very first economic statement, the Prime Minister ripped a further $2.1 billion out of the health budget by slashing bulk billing for diagnostic imaging and for pathology and cutting crucial health workforce training programs.

Every state and territory is suffering as a result of this Prime Minister's decision to tear up Labor's hospital funding agreements. Just today, the South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill, has warned his state may be forced to close hospitals. Victoria's health minister, Jill Hennessy, has warned:

Those cuts will have a devastating impact on Victorians who are sick and who need health care …

Mike Baird, the Premier of New South Wales—not one of ours—has said that this will not be sustainable for public hospitals across this country. This government's only answer when it comes to health policy is to slash and burn and to put all of the costs onto patients. Public hospitals deserve better. Our schools deserve better than this government whose only answer is to cut, cut, cut.