Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will not try to speak as quickly as Senator Fierravanti-Wells did, and if I do not get everything in I will just have to live with that. I find it absolutely hypocritical that Senator Fierravanti-Wells would stand up here and question the Labor government’s record on health. We have to analyse the Howard government’s record on health. When the current Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, was the minister for health in 2003, $108 million was cut from health. Here we have the opposition daring to argue about more money being spent on health, when they were the arch cutters of funding to health. In 2004, $172 million was cut by Tony Abbott from the health budget. In 2005, Tony Abbott cut $264 million from the health budget, and in 2006, $372 million was cut out of the health budget. If the Howard government had been re-elected, a further $497 million would have been cut from health. That was a billion dollars from the health system.

What were they spending the money on? They were spending the money on pork-barrelling and electoral bribes. That was the economic incompetence of the Howard government. They allowed working people and working families to not have access to decent health, because they were too busy pork-barrelling and trying to bribe the electorate. How dare the opposition talk about lost opportunities in health when the Howard government was responsible for 11½ years of incompetence, neglect and cost cutting. That is the record of the Howard government. Even Dr Kerryn Phelps said at the time:

The Treasurer, Peter Costello, announced in January of this year that there would be no new money for health in this budget, and it appears that that’s exactly what’s been delivered.

She went on to say:

I’d have to say it’s very unpopular. It’s not seen to address the fundamental issues, particularly in general practice, which relate to access and affordability.

I can go through the AMA’s quotes for every budget under the Howard government, where the Howard government was ripping the heart out of Australia’s health system. We are about changing that. We are about making sure that we can deliver a decent health system for every working family in this country—not just if you are rich enough to pay for it. In the public hospital system, we want to ensure that the money is there for ordinary Australian working families. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.