Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. According to the AMA's Public Hospital Report Card, since this conservative government came to office the average wait time for elective surgery in Tasmania has increased by 60 per cent to 72 days. Why should patients in Tasmania needing hip replacements have to wait even longer for surgery because of this Prime Minister's cuts to hospitals?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member and make a very clear point: Labor don't just hate private health; they're 'medifrauds' as well. There's a reason. That is because, under us, what you have seen is record hospital funding every year, in every state and in every territory. Let me repeat that: record hospital funding every year, in every state, in every territory. If you want to understand about Tasmania, when we came to office, the figure that was given under the previous Labor government at the federal level was $299 million in 2013. Then, under us, it went to $330 million, $375 million, $387 million, $393 million, $408 million, $423 million and going up and up each and every year. That is what is actually happening: record funding under us and each year is a record year.

An interesting thing, though, is that, since we have come in, our funding to state hospitals has increased by 34 per cent. How much has state funding increased to state hospitals? Ten per cent. So we have increased funding at more than three times the rates of the states. Our funding is up $103 billion over the current five-year period. It's at $103 billion. Under Labor, federally, in the entire six years that they were in government, it was $73 billion. But if you say, 'Gosh, gee, it's a little bit later in time. What is the growth rate?' I'll tell you. Under Labor it was six per cent; under us, it's 7.9 per cent. In other words, our growth rate is 1.9 per cent higher than under the previous Labor government. These people are not just haters of private health insurance; they're 'medifrauds'.

You know what? There was a particular document that fell into my hands. It happened to be from the shadow minister for health and Medicare. It was after a meeting.

An honourable member: Table it.

I will table it. It was after a meeting, with the participation, as she says, of over 150 leading thinkers on health. It sounds a bit like the citizens assembly—coincidentally, exactly the same numbers. They then produced their document on their health policy.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

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

The member for Ballarat is warned.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was 17 pages.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

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

No, the member for Ballarat will cease interjecting.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were 102 paragraphs. How much money did they commit for hospital funding? Zero dollars. They didn't contribute, propose or budget for a single extra dollar for hospital funding—not one extra dollar. Yesterday the member for Ballarat was asked about this and, in one of those disastrous press conferences, was utterly unable to commit a single extra dollar. So we've delivered $103 billion. The previous government delivered $73 billion. This is triple the rate of growth of the states. We're making a real difference. (Time expired)