Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It has always been clear in the government’s own budgets. I would refer people to the fact that estimates of the amounts of the states’ total revenue that would be dedicated to health were fully reported in the budget and the most recent estimates were included on page 114 of the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook. This information has been there for members of parliament and interested members of the public to digest.

Now, apparently, the Leader of the Opposition is going to pretend he did not know about this in order to try to clutch for an excuse to wreck health reform. Members of this House should recognise that, if the Leader of the Opposition gets his way and wrecks health reform, he is then wrecking plans to do things like deliver $7 billion in funding to improve our health system, starting from 1 July this year—that is, wrecking things like an additional $15.6 billion in funding to address increased demand from 2014, and wrecking things like our ability to provide more doctors, more nurses and more hospital beds. There will be 6,000 more doctors, 1,300 new hospital beds and 2,500 new aged care beds.

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