Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Will the minister advise the House of the need for sound financial planning in health and of the reasons for previous reductions in projected health spending?

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

I thank the member for Melbourne Ports for his question. I am delighted to get a question about health spending. As finance minister, it seems beyond the capability of the opposition to ask any questions of anybody about health matters—so I am delighted to have the opportunity to address them.

In recent days in the chamber there has been some controversy about the 2003 budget papers: Did the Howard government, or did it not, cut funding for public hospitals for a period of five years, the vast bulk of which was under the stewardship of the now Leader of the Opposition, the then health minister? The Leader of the Opposition is extremely agitated about this question, even more agitated than he usually is. We have had him taking points of order. We have had them moving gag motions on the Prime Minister. We have had personal explanations. We have had fancy charts being waved around in the chamber over several days. He and his team are extremely agitated about this point. There is one aspect of the debate that has not had a great deal of focus—

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Briggs interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Mayo will leave the chamber under standing order 94(a).

The member for Mayo then left the chamber.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to 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.