Tony Abbott’s first budget will cut more than $12 billion from Victoria’s hospitals and tax Victorians more than $200 million a year for visits to GPs.
Tony Abbott lied to Victorians before the last election. Tony Abbott promised Australians there would be ‘no cuts to health’.
(TONY ABBOTT, ABC NEWS, 6 SEPTEMBER 2013)
Instead he plans to cut more than $12 billion from Victoria’s hospitals. These cuts will hit from July and put more than 330 sub-acute beds at risk this year alone.
Tony Abbott’s first budget also includes almost $100 million cut from adult dental services in Victoria and a $92 million cut for Victoria from the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health.
The plan for a GP Tax is lazy policy that will damage Australia’s health system, putting additional pressure on emergency departments that are already struggling the state Liberal government’s hospital cuts.
In another blatant lie before the last election Tony Abbott promised ‘we’re not shutting any Medicare Locals’.
(TONY ABBOTT, LEADERS’ DEBATE, 28 AUGUST 2013)
Instead he plans to shut every single Medicare Local in Victoria and across the country, further jeopardising after hours GP services, cutting frontline services and abandoning preventive health programs.
These are changes that the Vice President of the Australian Medical Association has warned will ‘set back healthcare in Australia by over 50 years’.