Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. I am seeking clarification about Indi hospital funding. As reported in the Wangaratta Chronicle and The Border Mail, there is a dispute between the Commonwealth and the Victorian government about calculations around the national partnership agreement. If it is not accurate for this year, can the minister guarantee us for the next two years? And, if the Commonwealth is not able to support funding for operations, would it consider extra funding for capital works, particularly at the Wangaratta hospital?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have actually come prepared with a copy of the National Health Reform Agreement, signed by the Labor Party under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with the premiers and chief ministers of every state and territory.

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

You ripped it up.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I caution the member for Indi not to believe everything that the Victorian Labor Party tells her about Commonwealth funding to the Victorian health system. Clause 3c of the agreement makes it very plain that the National Health Funding Pool has to take a nationally consistent approach. What we are actually seeing from the Victorian health minister, uncorrected by the Labor Party in this place—

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

Because you corrected it when David Davis did it. I remember that well.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

is a sneaky attempt to game the system and step up and say, 'We actually want different calculations for our state than for every other state.' So the way the National Health Funding Pool is distributed is based, as members know, on activity based funding and the national efficient price. What Victoria has done is artificially deflate the base of that funding formula so that the difference between that and the rate of funding that the Commonwealth notionally provides from this hospital funding pool is higher than it should be.

There are checks and balances here. I reassure the member for Indi that, if the argument that the Victorian Labor Party was putting is correct, every other state, particularly the Labor states around the table, would be stepping up and saying: 'What about us? We demand the same treatment.' In fact, they are not. The Victorian minister is friendless around the COAG table. The Leader of the Opposition, the member for Jagajaga and the member for Isaacs as senior cabinet ministers in the opposition should correct the Victorian health minister—

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

Just like you did when David Davis did it.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and should make it very clear that the sneaky accounting trick she is trying to pull, frightening individual hospitals, frightening patients, offending consumers and leaving us another Labor mess to clean up. I will be writing to every single state public hospital system to explain to them that it is the Labor Party who created the system—

Ms King interjecting—

and that the inconsistency and the gaming of that system by the Victorian health minister should absolutely be held up and held accountable. This is a mistake by Labor and a correction by the coalition. I look forward to correcting the record at every single Victorian hospital.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Ballarat interjected continually through the answer. Almost non-stop at one point. The member for Ballarat is warned.