Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We had a very interesting situation in question time today. On the one hand, we had Senator Boswell, who was very much concerned about the impact on low-income earners—people earning about $50,000 on FBT and salary sacrificing—and then we had Senator Colbeck attacking a measure that seeks to alleviate the tax burden on people earning $50,000.

Senator Colbeck is again playing politics with the Tasmanian health system. Those opposite did it during the election, with the Mersey hospital, and they are doing it again here. I remind the Senate of what actually happened under the previous government in terms of hospital funding to Tasmania. We do not have to go too far; we only have to look at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Health expenditure Australia 2005-06 report, which was released last year and showed that the Australian government’s share of the public hospital bill declined by more than five per cent in the four years to June 2006, with the load shifting to the state government. That meant that the Howard government short-changed Tasmania by $70 million each and every year. It was funding that would have paid for more nurses and opened more beds to allow for more operations to be performed across Tasmania’s public hospitals. That is the situation. That was the situation under the previous government, and Senator Colbeck well knows that.

I will also inform the Senate exactly what Labor has delivered to Tasmania’s health system. The recent budget delivered significant investments in Tasmania’s health. These investments underpin the recommendations of the clinical services plan and include $15 million towards the establishment of an integrated care centre in Launceston; up to $2.5 million towards the establishment of a GP after-hours clinic in Burnie; up to $5 million towards the establishment of a GP superclinic in Devonport; up to $7.7 million for an additional radiation oncology unit in the north or north-west; $1.25 million for mental health counselling with the Sisters of Charity; $60,000 towards the redevelopment of the Penguin Medical Centre; $3.5 million to support the purchase of a PET scanner at the Royal Hobart Hospital; up to $8 million towards the establishment of a GP superclinic for the eastern shore, with clinics at both Bellerive and Sorell; and $10 million for patient transport services. This is what the Rudd Labor government has delivered to Tasmania, as well as it being part of the $3.2 billion National Health and Hospitals Reform Plan. What we saw from the previous government was a ripping out of $70 million from the Tasmanian health system.

I will just go back to the Medicare levy surcharge. The surcharge was introduced by the Howard government in 1997. The then Minister for Health and Family Services, Dr Wooldridge, in his speech introducing the surcharge, indicated that the surcharge was aimed at high-income earners, the people who could afford to pay for private health insurance. However, under the Howard government, the levy income threshold has remained static over 10 years, while average weekly earnings have increased by nearly 50 per cent. The Howard government’s refusal to increase the levy threshold meant that close to 50 per cent of Australians, many of them only earning the average wage, were being slugged with paying the surcharge despite the fact that this was not who the surcharge was intended to impact on.

In his speech in reply on the budget, Dr Nelson railed against what he labelled as ‘bracket creep’ and ‘tax increases on the sly’. However, such claims are hypocritical when applied in retrospect, considering that the now opposition did nothing—I repeat: nothing—for 10 years and effectively imposed tax increases on the sly on working families in Australia by simply not increasing the Medicare surcharge threshold. (Time expired)