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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-06-17 Daily Xml
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Federal Budget

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for Health: what was the result of the meeting of state and commonwealth health ministers in Sydney last week which included discussions on the impact of the federal budget?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:44): I would like to thank the member for Torrens for the question. Last week, in Sydney, health ministers held what was best described as an emergency meeting of the Standing Council on Health. In my time as minister I have not seen the state and territories so united against the foul event of Joe Hockey's federal budget and the resulting impact on health and hospitals around the nation. In an extraordinary unilateral event, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott tore up years of negotiation and repudiated the National Health Reform Agreement.

The commonwealth really needs to understand what this is going to mean for front-line services. These are not things that can just be absorbed by hardworking doctors and nurses in our public hospitals. I put South Australia's case strongly and it became quite clear to me during the meeting that the commonwealth minister and the states had a completely different appreciation of the impact of the cuts in the budget. I pressed home an important issue that appears lost on the commonwealth, and that is that their effective withdrawal from the public health sector and their repudiation of the national health reform agreement means that the commonwealth no longer has skin in the game in health in this country.

Let me review the shock that the federal government has forced onto South Australians. In addition to a co-payment of an extra $7 for every GP visit, the commonwealth is ripping $655 million out of the heart of our hospital system. The impact on our hospital emergency departments through the co-payment will cause them to be blocked up with people avoiding a visit to a GP. The commonwealth has put about a fantasy that the states should charge a payment in our emergency departments. This absurd notion just demonstrates how out of touch the federal government is. I have publicly ruled it out and I will rule it out again: this place charging a payment to patients in our emergency departments.

The $655 million that we will lose creates an impact of 600 beds being shut down almost overnight. This will be the same as taking a wrecking ball to the Flinders Medical Centre and a bulldozer through it. There are countless national partnership agreements being ceased early or not being renewed as well. You have to wonder about a federal government that would cut money from providing palliative care to terminally ill children. I really do not think that Peter Dutton has a full grasp of what these cuts are going to mean to services to not only South Australians but the sick, frail and elderly right around our nation.

I have called on the commonwealth government to reverse these dramatic cuts and I have repeated this directly to minister Dutton. On behalf of South Australians I have also asked minister Dutton to finally meet with me so that we can have an opportunity to put our case to him and call on him to intervene with the federal Treasurer to cease these potentially catastrophic cuts. I am pleased that minister Dutton has agreed to meet with me, and we will have that meeting very soon.

As a state we cannot absorb these cuts without them having a direct impact on services. It means that we are going to have to make decisions about things that we can continue and things that we cannot continue. Tony Abbott's government has ripped up its contract with the Australian people. It has broken its promises. The South Australian government, however, honours its pledges to South Australians and we will continue to keep faith with the people to work through these cuts.

The most remarkable thing about the meeting last week was that each and every state and territory health minister at the meeting supported me in my comments, and all bar two of them are, in fact, Liberals. I would suggest that perhaps members opposite might have some conversations with their interstate counterparts before they start trying to play down the impact of these cuts.

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