Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

There are a couple of important elements to the answer to his question. The first one is, and he may not be aware, that in the last few minutes, as I understand it, in estimates where the fiscal group were, they did talk about the change that you're referring to. I think they answered a number of questions about it, and so it may be that you've not yet caught up with that, but that's understandable because you've been in here with us. That's the first point. The second point is that, as I said on the day of the release of the mid-year budget update in the middle of December, a big driver of the medium-term change has been the provision that we made for the hospitals deal that has subsequently been struck by the health minister and the Prime Minister. So a big part of the change over that 10-year medium-term period, as I said on the day of the MYEFO release, is the provision that we made for hospitals.

The third point is, if you look at the last year of the medium term—in the middle of the 2030s—in the last year, the biggest driver of the change is a change in receipts. There will be lower receipts. I think I made that point in response to a question from a journalist in the last couple of weeks—two or three weeks—so we have answered his question comprehensively.

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