Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Liberals' cuts to health care in our community just keep on coming. At the Prince of Wales Hospital, our local community hospital, the New South Wales Liberal government and the federal Liberal government have cut 26 beds, they have closed an entire ward, they have cut medical staff and allied health workers, and they have cut pharmacy positions. Recently I met with nurses at the hospital, who told me of the regular occurrence of bed block in the emergency department now. This is where patients are left on trolleys in hallways because they simply cannot get a bed. This week we learned in The Sydney Morning Herald that the cuts keep on coming, because this week it has been announced that the south-eastern local area health service will make another 50 staff redundant because of this government's cuts.

Many in my community are asking why this is occurring. Why has the Prince of Wales Hospital had these cuts? There is a simple reason: the Liberal government has cut $50 billion from the Commonwealth hospital budget. Fifty billion dollars has been cut from the hospitals budget throughout the country, and that has affected the Prince of Wales Hospital. And who voted for those cuts? Prime Minister Turnbull put his hand up in this chamber here and voted for those cuts. On behalf of our community, I ask Prime Minister Turnbull: will you reverse your government's disastrous cuts and the cuts to the Prince of Wales Hospital?