Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

and that is: why in the 2003 budget papers of the Howard government of Peter Costello and Senator Nick Minchin, the then Treasurer and the then finance minister, do we find a very substantial cut to projected spending on public hospitals? There is a very important explanation for this in the Howard government’s budget papers, and I will quote. It reads as follows:

… a reduction in public hospital usage growth beyond growth resulting from demographic changes. This change in usage growth reflects in part the fact that more services are being provided in private hospitals following the introduction of the Government’s 30 per cent Private Health Insurance Rebate and Lifetime Health Cover.

In other words, there was a deliberate decision by the Howard government to move resources out of public hospitals, and that is where the $1 billion of funding that was stripped out of public hospitals came from. It was a deliberate decision by the Howard government to remove that funding from public hospitals—over a $1 billion over a period of five years, the vast bulk of which was when the Leader of the Opposition was health minister.

That shows just how phoney his vociferous protestations are in this debate. This was not some kind of technical revision based on revised demographic assessments or changed calculations with respect to the cost of health technology; this was a deliberate, ideological decision by the Howard government to run down investment in public hospitals. It is there in black and white in the 2003 budget papers that I tabled yesterday—more than $1 billion ripped out of the public hospital by the Howard government. That is why the Leader of the Opposition wants to talk about everything else but health. That is why he has asked no questions of the government about its health reform and its hospitals plans. That is why we had to force him today to come to the dispatch box to debate health issues in this parliament. The Leader of the Opposition has an appalling track record on health and hospitals. He was responsible for more than $1 billion being ripped out of the public hospital system, and he is now trying to deny that fact. The truth is there for all to see in the Howard government’s budget papers.

See this speech in context