Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Let me start with a single figure: $30 billion. Thirty billion dollars is the amount that we are adding to hospital expenditure in Australia, and we go this year from $21 billion to $22 billion to $23 billion and to $24 billion. What we see is that, from when Labor was last in office, we go from $13 billion to more than double that, $28 billion, by the end of the next hospital funding agreement. There is a 116 per cent increase in hospital funding on our watch. That's the reality. But you might want to compare and contrast this with what is happening with Labor in Longman. We have mentioned today that we increased funding for Metro North not by $10, $20, $30 or $40 million but by $120 million in the last financial year alone, but how much did Queensland Labor decrease funding by? Not $5, not $10, not $15, not $20 but $21 million; that is what they cut from their own hospitals, whilst we increased it by $120 million.

It is fascinating that Labor raise this figure, because what we see now is that Labor are walking away from even their own policy on hospital funding. What we have now is Labor running around the country making little contributions here or there, but there's a simple question: will they guarantee that every single dollar they have will be allocated under activity based funding? The answer is: they've walked away from their own policy. At the last election, some in this House may remember Labor were talking about a figure of $57 billion. Do you know what? They turned up to the election with a $2 billion figure and a $55 billion black hole against their own funding. They never funded their own complaints. They never funded the very thing that they implied for many years that they would do.

So, when it comes down to it, you see what we're doing: $30 billion of additional funding for hospitals in Australia—record funding each year, every year, in every state and territory. And, when it comes to Longman and Caboolture, we see that Metro North had a $21 million cut under Queensland Labor, but there is absolute silence from this opposition.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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