Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

No wonder the Minister for Health did not want to go first; he has not had the best week, I would have to say. We might go to some of those particular events.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

The minister loves to throw a few insults out—angry little ant that he is. He loves to do that, so let's make sure that we actually go to the substance of the budget. It is no wonder that he does not want to get up and talk about it.

What I want to go to is, in fact, the significant rift between the minister and his secretary, which emerged through Senate estimates—the fact, Minister, that you do not have any departmental officials backing you up here in consideration in detail. We just saw a massive number of Immigration officials backing their minister up in consideration in detail, but there are very strong rumours that there is a very strong rift between the minister in the chamber and his departmental secretary.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

Minister, how can you do good policy when you have such a problem within your department?

I want to go to the first three hours of Senate estimates, where what we had—

Mr Hunt interjecting—

I would ask the Deputy Speaker to intervene on the minister here if she could, because he will have his turn to respond to questions. I want to go to the heart of what we heard in Senate estimates, which was that this government has been beavering away, allowing the department free rein, on a proposal for our public hospital system which would have seen the abolition of the private health insurance rebate and a substantial cut to public hospitals. I want to take the minister through the evidence about the development of this plan. This plan first emerged in the government's Federation white paper. This plan was discussed by the Prime Minister with premiers directly. The previous Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, raised this with the Victorian Premier and with the Queensland Premier at the time as the Commonwealth's proposal for public hospital funding. This was a government proposal.

The department was then instructed to undertake work on this proposal. We know that it was discussed by senior officials because it made its way not only into the Federation white paper but also into COAG documents. So the schedule on hospital benefits that the government put forward to officials in early 2016 contained the hospital benefit schedule, and I will quote from one of the clauses of that. It said: 'To finance the establishment of the hospital benefit, the Commonwealth will repurpose existing funding, possibly including public hospital funding transfers to the states, Medicare Benefits Schedule funding for in-hospital services and the private health insurance rebate.' Then during the process of Senate estimates it has emerged that the department has continued work on that proposal. It has continued work on that proposal with the tacit and explicit instructions of the minister.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

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