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

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. I know she is deeply concerned about health services in her electorate. She covers two very important hospitals, Box Hill and Monash, and I have had cause to visit those hospitals with her as well as to talk to her about health care in her community generally. What the member for Chisholm could say to the House of Representatives is that, over the years that she has represented her electorate in this parliament, the health care for her community was suffering under the Howard government and suffering during the days that the Leader of the Opposition was Minister for Health and Ageing. Those hospitals, just like hospitals around Australia, were showing the strains that were coming from the percentage of funding coming from the federal government going down and down and down.

Indeed, in the days that the Leader of the Opposition was minister for health, the Commonwealth share of public funding fell from 45 per cent to 35 per cent. The Howard government and the Leader of the Opposition were warned four times by the AMA about the chronic underfunding of the system. Then, to add insult to injury, $1 billion was taken out of the public hospital system. This created a pressure for our public hospitals—

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