Libby Coker (Corangamite, 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 to ensure Australians have access to the health services they need, and why is it important to strengthen Medicare 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 the member for Corangamite for that question. She is such a huge advocate for Australian workers earning more and keeping more of what they are. She also knows that the wage figures that were released last week showed that workers in health care and social assistance saw their wages rise last year by 5½ per cent.

From 1 July, Labor will deliver every single healthcare worker in the country a tax cut to help with the cost of living. That'll help the hundreds and hundreds of Australians working hard right now at the Frankston Hospital in south-east Melbourne. A second-year registered nurse at that hospital will get a tax cut of $1,550—double what they would have received under the Morrison government plan. A hospital orderly at the Frankston Hospital will get a tax cut $862, compared to just $58 under those opposite, or $1 a week—a miserly $1 a week. There will be more orderlies and more nurses working at the Frankston Hospital after the redevelopment of that hospital is completed next year. It's the largest ever health project in south-east Melbourne delivered by the Victorian Labor government. And that new, bigger, more modern hospital will be working with more funds from the Commonwealth, after the Prime Minister agreed with National Cabinet to a new hospital funding formula that will deliver at least $13 billion in additional funding to Australia's hospitals, like the one at Frankston.

But I'm not the only one out there right now talking about hospital funding. There's another ad doing the rounds down in Dunkley right now trumpeting the former government's allegedly terrific performance on funding hospitals. And it's labelled 'fact', so of course it must be right. But there are a few salient facts not included in the ad, like the fact that the Leader of the Opposition in his first budget as health minister cut $700 million from Victorian hospitals. That was just a small downpayment for the $50 billion that he planned to cut from hospitals over a decade, set out in this glossy budget document from 2014. I regret to say that this Leader of the Opposition is becoming a serial offender when it comes to spurious claims about his record as health minister—talking a big game on bulk billing without telling anyone that he planned to abolish the thing altogether or taking credit for headspace services that had been funded years earlier by the Gillard government in the 2011 budget.

The truth is that this Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister, delivered only one thing, and that was cuts to the health system. And the Australian people will never forget it.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.