Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, that gives you the average government school's recurrent costs. This means that cost impacts resulting from the introduction of the carbon price will be captured in this indexation and schools will automatically receive increased funding over time.

In relation to health services, the Treasury modelling estimates the average price impact on health services to be around 0.3 per cent. This group in the modelling would include hospital and medical services, optical and dental services and pharmaceuticals. To the extent there is any increase in costs due to the carbon price, current and future funding arrangements will automatically ensure that public hospitals continue to be properly funded. Public hospital funding in the National Healthcare Agreement is indexed at over 7 per cent in each year of the forward estimates. In addition, when we move to the new healthcare agreements the government has struck with the states and territories, the Commonwealth has committed to pay 50 per cent of the growth in hospital costs. I trust this assists the senator.