Tony Abbott has compounded his election lies on health by ripping another $940 million from public hospitals over the next four years.
Mr Abbott has repeatedly denied breaking his promise of “no cuts to health” but the evidence is there again, in black and white in his own statement:
“payments to public hospitals, which are expected to decrease by $941 million over four years to 2017-18.”
Tony Abbott now has a perfect record of breaking his promise of “no cuts to health” by cutting health funding in all three of the economic statements his government has handed down since he came to power.
In the 2013/14 MYEFO he announced a preliminary cut of over $200 million, before the 2014 Budget ripped over $50 billion from public hospitals.
The 2014 Budget included a cut of $1.9 billion over the forward estimates, a figure now added to by a further $940 million cut today.
Today’s Mini-Budget also exposes Tony Abbott’s claims to have abandoned his GP Tax as another lie.
The GP Tax is still budgeted to raise $3.5 billion over the next four years, barely unchanged from the $3.6 billion forecast on Budget night.
It shows the only change Tony Abbott has made to the GP Tax is to sneak it in by the back door, through regulation, instead of doing it up front, through legislation.
It’s still a GP Tax hitting the sick and the poor at their most vulnerable.
It’s still a tax, it’s still a broken promise and today’s additional cuts to hospital funding confirm nothing Tony Abbott says on health can be trusted.