The Turnbull Government’s hypocrisy on health funding has scaled new heights today with the Health Minister opening yet another world class medical facility funded by a Labor program she scrapped, and denounced as wasteful.
The Monash Translational Research Facility, which has actually been operational since October, is an $84 million state-of-the-art centre that combines research, clinical and technological platforms to translate scientific research into world leading health breakthroughs.
That is whyLabor provided $71 million for the state of the art centre in the 2009 Budget out of our $5 billion Health and Hospitals Fund, which was established to build and upgrade health and medical research and training facilities across Australia.
The fund was scrapped in the Coalition’s first Budget, one of the many victims of the war on health which saw over $60 billion ripped out of health and hospital funding, and patients hit with a GP Tax and higher prescription charges.
The minister defended this decision by declaring that:
“it was actually an interest-based fund which was spent very rapidly and I think unwisely by the previous Labor government.”
Susan Ley, Radio National, 11th May 2015
Now, nine months later, in an absolutely shameless performance, that same minister is opening one of the many great facilities built by the Labor fund she scrapped, and denounced.