Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Can I say that we are very pleased by the strong interest shown by the opposition in the Health and Hospitals Fund. Can I also say that the area across all of the health and hospital funding is one that we do take seriously; it is an area where we have health reform going on. Of course, the opposition, during their time in government, would be familiar with what they called their hospital and health reform, because what it did was rip $1 billion out of the health system. What this government has been doing is addressing that by delivering a massive reform to the health system, which was never done by the previous health minister in the Howard government. We are delivering the My Hospital website. We are increasing hospital funding by 50 per cent and delivering 70,000 more elective surgery operations. That is what this government is doing in relation to health and hospital reform. We have agreed to new boundaries for local hospital networks that have removed the old area health services in New South Wales. We have given nurses and midwives access to—