The Abbott Government’s hypocrisy on health funding has scaled new heights today with the Health Minister opening a world class medical facility funded by a Labor program she scrapped, and denounced as wasteful.
The Children’ Bioresearch Centre at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute is indeed, as the minister declares, “a new world-class, cutting edge medical research facility that will help find new treatments and cures for childhood illness.”
That is why Labor provided $4.7 million for the state of the art centre in the 2009 Budget out of our 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 Abbott Government’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.
Just last week, the minister defended the scrapping of this fund, declaring that the money “was spent very rapidly and I think unwisely”.
Now, just ten days later, in an absolutely shameless performance, the minister is opening one of the many great facilities built by the Labor fund she scrapped, and denounced.