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Tony Abbott’s first budget will cut more than $15 billion from New South Wales hospitals.
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Tony Abbott’s first budget will cut more than $15 billion from New South Wales hospitals.
Tony Abbott lied to Australians 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 $15 billion from New South Wales hospitals. This will see wards close and doctors and nurses sacked.
This is on top of Tony Abbott’s plans to tax New South Wales patients more than $285 million a year for visits to GPs.
Labor will stand up to Tony Abbott’s $3.5 billion GP tax based on broken promises and a false claim about over servicing by doctors.
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 because of the state Liberal government’s hospital cuts.
Tony Abbott’s first budget also includes almost $400 million cut from adult dental services across Australia and a $368 million cut to the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health.
Medicines will cost Australians an extra $1.3 billion in this budget because Tony Abbott wants to put the price of prescriptions up to $42.70 for most Australians and to $6.90 for concessional patients. Labor will stand up for Australian families and oppose this measure.
Reports last week show the cuts the Abbott government intends to make to the Medicare Benefits Schedule will cost Australians another $1.7 billion in this budget and see specialist visits cost ordinary Australians $100.
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 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’.