Page 957 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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In the ACT it means the equivalent loss of funding for 58,000 elective surgery procedures by 2026. The funding could have delivered 1,200 nurses into our system or 80 intensive care unit beds or 340 general inpatient beds in the territory. This is a significant—
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Members on my left will come to order.
MR BARR: This is a significant cut not only to the ACT’s health system—
Mrs Jones: It was never funded.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mrs Jones!
MR BARR: but the health system of all states and territories. And if it was never funded, Madam Speaker, there is no way that the coalition in 2014 could claim it as a saving, and yet their budget papers claimed it as a saving. It cannot be both—it cannot not exist and be a saving. It was in the budget papers as an $80 billion saving. As much as that might be inconvenient for Mrs Jones—who is one of the great deniers in this place of the appalling record of her federal colleagues—in this instance you cannot claim an $80 billion saving and then say the money was not there.
You cannot claim that this will have no impact on health services when all of your state and territory colleagues are saying it will. The Canberra Liberals are the exception. They appear to be the only branch of the Liberal Party in this country at a state or territory level that wants to defend the $80 billion cuts to health and education. They are the only defenders; over there, Mr Hanson, the Leader of the Opposition, is the only person at a state or territory level for the Liberal Party prepared to say, “Yes, I want my federal colleagues to cut $80 billion from the health and education budget.” That is the position of the Leader of the Opposition. That is exactly what we are seeing from the Leader of the Opposition. That is what we see—defending the indefensible day after day.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR BARR: Here we go again. This is what animates them: defending $80 billion in cuts. They otherwise sit there—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR BARR: They get a little bit excited, don’t they! You get a bit excited when you are forced to confront the reality of what your colleagues are doing to hospitals and schools in this city. (Time expired.)
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Hinder. Members on my left will come to order so that I can hear Mr Hinder.
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