Page 3958 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 29 November 2022
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But—and I should stress this, and I have stressed this, Mr Assistant Speaker—it is an estimate, given the commonwealth is obliged to fund all activity up to a national 6.5 per cent growth cap. The Treasury forecast is really principally for their own budgetary purposes; it is projecting forward. What really matters is what the activity is for the activity-based funding to work out at the end of the day. If the activity is higher than states and territories have currently forecast, which it often is, and we expect it to be, the commonwealth will be obliged to fund their share.
The bottom line is that there are no cuts. It is incorrect. Those opposite know it—or should know it—because it was reported nationally at the time, but they have still brought a motion to this place asking me to write to the health minister to ask him to fix something that is not even a real thing. Given that all of paragraph (3) is fundamentally incorrect, therefore, we cannot support it, and I could not possibly agree to write to the commonwealth health minister or Treasurer asking them to reverse cuts that do not exist.
If this place agreed to this motion, I would have to write to the commonwealth to ask them to reverse something that has not happened, based on a misunderstanding from the local opposition. That is not something, as health minister, that I would be in the practice of doing. I want to stress that I have been in the practice of writing to the commonwealth health minister on numerous occasions to stress the importance of increasing commonwealth funding, and for the commonwealth to address the challenges that it genuinely is responsible for—things like aged care, NDIS and primary care. The Chief Minister was absolutely correct in identifying the real funding cuts to primary care under the previous coalition government as one of the key challenges in the system.
Of course, the other thing that state and territory ministers have put to the commonwealth repeatedly, to the former coalition government and now to this government, is that the 6.5 per cent cap is a problem. It is a problem under the Labor government, as it was a problem under the coalition. That is why state and territory health ministers have been calling for this cap to be abolished for some time. If members opposite have been listening in this place for the last few years or reading my or my health minister colleagues’ comments over the same period, we have been remarkably consistent in what we have been calling for. I have spoken about it in committees, I have spoken about it in the chamber, I have spoken about it in the media, and I have spoken directly with the former and the current commonwealth health minister; that is, the removal of the 6.5 per cent growth cap and the increase of commonwealth contributions to fifty-fifty.
I refer to what the former commonwealth Labor government committed to doing before the 2013 election and what the incoming Abbott government refused to do. Unfortunately, since then we have lived through a decade of neglect due to federal Liberal governments not taking their responsibilities in the health system seriously, whether that is dental, aged care, primary care, the relationship between Health and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or hospital funding.
Prior to the last election, did anything change? Did we hear anything from those opposite in support of removing the cap, in support of increasing the commonwealth
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