Page 3957 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 29 November 2022
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Members may be interested to know that the overall hospital funding base has actually increased compared to these figures of 1.9 and two per cent. The overall hospital funding base has in fact increased by an average of seven per cent per annum between 2013-14 and 2022-23, from just over $903 million in 2013-14 to $1.66 billion as outlined in the 2022-23 budget. Between 2013-14 and 2018-19, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this growth averaged 4.9 per cent per annum compared to Ms Castley’s bigger ideal—I am not quite sure where she got it from—of 4.3 per cent. Since the pandemic hit in 2019-20 to the present day, annual growth has increased to 9.6 per cent, reflecting the significant investments that we have made to respond to the more recent challenges.
Of course, Ms Castley might have been referring in her media comments to more recent times. I am pleased to point out to Ms Castley the 2021-22 budget, where the ACT government increased our contribution to our public hospitals in response to increased cost pressures caused by COVID-19 and demand pressures, with more than $60 million in revised indexation funding flowing into the system. This reflects a portion of the increased investment that I have described previously. Indeed that budget actually reflected a step change in our health system, with an additional $461 million over four years, reflecting the changed environment that we recognise that our health system faces, and this year’s budget has only built on that investment.
Besides not agreeing with the figures in paragraph (1) of Ms Castley’s motion, the underlying premise misunderstands how the National Health Reform Agreement operates. This relates directly to paragraph (3), which seeks members to acknowledge that the commonwealth government is reducing hospital funding. This is absolutely incorrect and displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how the National Health Reform Agreement operates.
Again, for the benefit of the Assembly, and particularly those opposite, the agreement does not enable the commonwealth to cut hospital funding. That is just not how it works. Minister Butler has been clear, in responding to these claims that were made following the budget, that the funding reflected state and territory initial estimates nationally and forecasting by commonwealth Treasury based on forecasts of activity that were provided by states and territories. It would not have mattered who held the commonwealth Treasury bench; for this specific element of the budget, the Treasury reflects the state and territory forecasts and estimates that are provided to the commonwealth, and those are the numbers that are reflected in the commonwealth budget papers.
To spell it out, the big states that account for most public hospital funding have provided forecasts to the commonwealth that are lower than the forecast they previously provided; therefore the commonwealth share of funding, or the commonwealth funding as their share of overall hospital funding, has been projected lower. I do not think any of us in the states and territories actually expect that to be the outcome, because while those forecasts of NWAU are lower, we also understand that the health system is under pressure and we are going to have to grow to the extent that we can with the constraints that we face.
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