Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

This latest funding debacle had its origins in the various versions of the so-called health reform proposal. The funding authority was included in the April 2010 version of the National Health and Hospital Networks Agreement but, with the ink barely dry, it was scrapped by Minister Roxon, who stated that we did not need to increase the size of the bureaucracy; it was appropriate for us to establish an authority without the need to do so. This was supposed to be the centrepiece of transparency for the so-called health reforms—and it was dumped with the ink barely dry. Then it was reinstated in the 2011 version and it actually became nine pool accounts in the August 2011 version, which eventually was enacted as the National Health Funding Body in 2012 to supposedly introduce unparalleled transparency into public hospital funding. In going out of her way to say that she is going to fund the hospitals directly, the Prime Minister is now acting contrary to her own legislation in funding the Victorian hospitals directly.

All of this chaos is in addition to all the other cuts that we have seen by Labor over the years: the $1.6 billion ripped out of public hospitals, the $4 billion ripped out of private health insurance, the $1 billion ripped out of dental health through the closure of the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, the seven GP super clinics that were promised but were never even opened, and the list goes on.

I would like to remind those opposite of this document—which of course they want to forget: New directions for Australian health: taking responsibility: Labor's plan for ending the blame game on health and hospital care, by Kevin Rudd. And there is a picture of Kevin Rudd smiling.