Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are right. I withdraw that: they were not stinging at all. But it is a little bit rich for Senator Ronaldson to get up and talk about health in this way, when the present Leader of the Opposition, when in government for five years as health minister, took a billion dollars out of the health system. He dragged out of the health system a billion dollars, as health minister. And here we are, with Senator Ronaldson having the gall to get up here and start telling us that what we are doing, our reform program for health and the input from local members—particularly Mr Cheeseman—should somehow be dismissed. Let me tell you that the constituents in Corangamite will not want to go back to a Liberal Party that supports taking even more money out of the health system.

Look at what we have done since we have been in government, a government that Mr Cheeseman is a proud member of. We have actually increased funding in health by 50 per cent. You know what that means in Victoria, Senator Ronaldson? He should know because as a Victorian senator he should understand that that is a $5 billion increase in the health spend in Victoria alone. I notice Senator McGauran from Victoria is already here. He should be incredibly proud of this government for increasing the health spend by $5 billion. You weren’t shaking your head, Senator McGauran? I am sure you do appreciate the extra $5 billion that the government is spending in Victoria. Of course, a lot of that money will go across the board and a lot of that money has ended up in Corangamite. I know Mr Cheeseman works very hard in this government to make sure that the constituents of Corangamite, after 76 years of neglect and being taken for granted by the Liberal Party, are now getting the input and the services that they have been crying out for for a long, long time.

I know Mr Cheeseman is very proud of what this government is doing in health and what we plan to do in health. Of course, the challenge for the opposition will be supporting us in our bold but necessary reform package in health. So let us see when Senator Ronaldson gets here and we have a debate about this in the chamber whether he will be proud enough to step up to the plate and say, ‘Yes, we accept that Mr Abbott, the now opposition leader, took out $1 billion from the health system when he was health minister, but we’ll support this Rudd Labor government in increasing the spend by 50 per cent, which it has already done, and now the reform agenda it has for the health system.’ We are very proud of that and I know Mr Cheeseman is very proud of that. The constituents of Corangamite are benefiting, like every other Victorian and Australian, from the health spend that this government has put in place.