Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Regional Development (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by Senators Lines and Ketter today relating to hospital funding.

Today, in this place, we heard yet again more rubbish from Minister Nash in relation to health. It might be an idea if the minister actually went to the budget papers of 2014-15, because it states on page 7 that there is a cut to health—to Commonwealth funding for public hospitals—of $57 billion. That is $57 billion cut from health. I often talk about the fact that, when Mr Abbott was the Minister for Health, he cut health by a billion dollars. But here we have the new Prime Minister cutting health at a rate of $57 billion.

The crucial health workforce training programs have been cut by $595 million. That is $595 million that has been cut out of the workforce training programs. They have ripped another $146 million out of the health prevention and ehealth programs and, most damaging of all, they have ripped another $650 million out of Medicare by slashing bulkbilling for diagnostic imaging and pathology. And we know what the real effects are going to mean to the Australian community when you have such savage cuts. It will have an enormous impact in my home state of Tasmania, because we have the fastest ageing population in this country. So Tasmanians are going to feel these cuts more so than others—