Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How is the Albanese Labor government working cooperatively with the states and territories to ensure that public hospitals are properly funded after a decade of cuts and neglect?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my friend, the member for Blair, for his question. As the Prime Minister said, what we saw yesterday was all of Australia's governments working together for the people of Australia. That hasn't always been the case. Australians for too long and too often have watched governments stuck in trench warfare playing the blame game, particularly in critical service areas like health, hospitals and disability support. You saw a very different approach yesterday, and it was an approach that was a great credit to this Prime Minister and to all the premiers and chief ministers. It's an approach that will deliver Australians better health care, better hospitals and more sustainable and functional systems of disability support.

In health, as the PM said, he announced more investment in strengthening Medicare—things like more urgent care clinics, as well as an historic funding deal around hospital funding, which will see the Commonwealth increase our supports for state efforts to do things like curb ramping and clear those elective surgery waiting lists that have built up over the course of COVID. At the same time states have agreed to support the Commonwealth in our efforts to make the NDIS sustainable and to develop a shared system of supports for people living with disability who are currently outside the NDIS, as the minister for the NDIS outlined at the Press Club today. This is what Australians want to see from all their governments—better health care, better hospitals, better disability supports. The approach that you saw yesterday from this Prime Minister could not be more different from the approach you saw over the past decade: a decade of division, of duckshoving and of savage funding cuts. This duckshoving was, of course, exemplified by the member for Cook, the former Prime Minister, with his daily refrain and daily protest of 'That's not my job,' and those cuts were championed by the Leader of the Opposition, more than any other person from that former government, when he was Australia's health minister. Far from working together for Australia, the 2014 budget document shows the approach of the Leader of the Opposition. He cut $50 billion in his first budget. Now he says, 'Oh, rubbish.' It's here, sunshine—it's in the graph, mate: $50 billion in funding cuts from the state hospital system. This is in the same budget where he wanted to abolish bulk billing altogether and the same budget where he wanted to jack up medicine prices altogether. No wonder this man was voted the worst health minister in the Medicare era—40 long years. He was also the Wreck-It Ralph of Australia's Federation.