Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This motion relates to the debate we have seen in this chamber about hospital funding. There has been a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing over this issue. We have heard the government claim that it has increased funding to the public hospital system and that is true. The pertinent point here, however, is that they have increased funding by less than what was promised.

If I can give an analogy, if you negotiate a three per cent pay increase with an employer and at the end of the year you receive a one per cent pay increase, that is effectively a cut. This is a $1.5 billion cut over four years, and it comes on the back of a chronic underinvestment by state governments in the hospital system. The government's announcement to return money to Victoria is not good enough. It needs to do that to all states, particularly Queensland and New South Wales, who have been hardest hit, and it needs to honour its own agreement and ensure that funding is done through the National Health Funding Pool.