After five years of relentless public hospital cuts, Scott Morrison and the Liberals simply cannot be trusted to deliver on a promise of extra funding.
This tricky announcement does not match Labor’s funding, and it does not reverse the savage cuts that Scott Morrison has inflicted on every public hospital in Australia.
As Treasurer, Morrison inflicted savage cuts on health and hospitals in every budget he authored.
And now he expects the Australian people to believe he’s suddenly seen the light and believes in better hospital funding?
The Liberal record speaks for itself.
In 2013 they promised “no cuts to health”. But in their very first Budget they swung the axe, cutting $57 billion from hospitals.
When they finally back-flipped on this shocking plan – under overwhelming pressure from a horrified Australian public – they still left our hospitals billions of dollars worse off than they would have been under Labor.
The Liberals promised to partner with the states to deliver an equal 50 per cent of hospital funding growth but then they reneged.
And all the states and territories – even the Liberals ones – are furious over Scott Morrison’s most recent retrospective funding attack, in which he’s trying to claw back more than $600 million for services already delivered.
As a result of these savage Liberal cuts, Australians are languishing for longer than ever before in hospital emergency department waiting rooms and on elective surgery waiting lists.
Now the Government has finally realised, months out from of an election, the Australian people are not happy with their constant cuts to healthcare?
Well it doesn’t matter what they say before an election because you can’t trust them to deliver. Their health promises aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull or Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton in charge this week – health and hospital cuts are in the Liberal DNA.
By contrast, Labor will fully reverse the Liberals’ cuts to public hospitals from the next election to 2025 through our $2.8 billion Better Hospitals Fund.
Our Fund will deliver more beds, more doctors and nurses, shorter wait times, better facilities and better care.
Labor will always invest more in hospitals than the Liberals – and the Australian people know we will actually deliver.
WEDNESDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2018