Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Having inherited this health system, the government stepped up to what was the underlying problem, which is health costs rising sharply every year—they rise greater than the CPI; they rise greater than the GST. With the federal government year after year under the Leader of the Opposition putting as a percentage less and less into public hospitals and with the rate of increase of the GST not keeping pace, inevitably the financing of state governments was being squeezed and this was not sustainable in the long term. Indeed, had this been allowed to continue without any reform, you would have seen a time when it would have taken all of state government budgets—

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