Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the matter of public importance today and about the important role the Commonwealth plays in funding public health services and, indeed, public hospitals across the country. The Commonwealth is the largest funder of health services across the country and provides just over 60 per cent of all government funding going into health, which currently exceeds $100 billion per annum between the state, territory and Commonwealth governments. I think it is absolutely appropriate, with the issues that continue to be leaked into the papers at the ends of sitting days, that we do respond to those issues as they emerge. The concerning one yesterday was about a withdrawal of funding from public schools or means-testing parents; today it is about the Commonwealth walking away from funding public hospitals.

I note other speakers have used the Premier of South Australia in their defence of the indefensible, saying that Mr Weatherill congratulated—I think that was the language that Senator Macdonald used—the government on the issues potentially being raised in the green paper. That is not an entirely correct representation of Premier Weatherill's comments. Indeed, Premier Weatherill, in expanding on his comments today, made the point that, when it comes to health funding, the Commonwealth, states and territories need to remain working together in a cooperative fashion. We are in a sense, to use Premier Weatherill's term, joined at the hip. You cannot have one funding partner in the health system potentially remove themselves from it when they have policy and funding responsibilities in other respects. The Commonwealth has responsibilities in primary health care, in GPs and in the MBS. It also has funding responsibilities in relation to aged care, disability and community care. We need all of the partners who work with the hospitals, which are the entry and exit points for a lot of the people using those services, to be supported financially by both the national and the state governments. We both need skin in the game. For one to remove itself from one element and believe it will not impact on the services is unbelievable. To say that the state and territory governments have 100 per cent funding responsibility for hospitals—what is the incentive to run efficient community care, GPs or disability and aged-care services when there is no incentive to make sure that services at the hospital are running efficiently?

Tony Abbott wants out of schools and hospitals, and it appears he wants out of preschools as well. This is off the back of saying that there would be no cuts to health. All we have seen in the last two budgets, which is all we can measure this current government on, is a walk away from funding commitments relating to health. If I use the ACT as an example, in the 2014-15 budget the ACT lost—and it updated in this year's budget—about $228 million in funding that we expected to get, from the Commonwealth, to run public-hospital services in the ACT.