Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister's comments on the $80 billion cuts to hospitals and schools: 'We are not talking about next week or next month or even next year. We are talking about changes in three years' time'. How can the Prime Minister not know that these cuts start on 1 July, in 28 days? The Prime Minister is making it up as he goes along. How can he understand how much it is hurting Australians?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me make it crystal clear to the member who asked the question: public hospital funding increases by nine per cent this year, nine per cent next year, nine per cent the year after that and six per cent in the final year of the forward estimates. That is the truth. The only difference between us and members opposite is that we are slowing the rate of growth of public hospital spending in the final year of this budget's forward estimates because we think that public hospital spending, along with everything else, should be sustainable.

It is not easy to deal with the debt and deficit disaster that the Labor Party left us. It is not easy to deal with a situation where our country is paying $1 billion in dead money every single month just in interest on the borrowings. It is not easy to deal with this. But this government will do what it was elected to do and get the budget back under control.

As for the specific measure that the member who asked the question is concerned about, this is something that the former government cut. This is a cut that the former government made. It was not there in the pre-election fiscal outlook. It is a Labor cut, and I say to the states and territories: 'Know who is responsible for this: it is them. It is members on the other side of the House.'