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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-11 Daily Xml
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Women's and Children's Hospital

The Hon. C. BONAROS (14:43): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about funding for the current Women's and Children's Hospital.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: As part of his state budget announcement yesterday, the Treasurer spruiked the state government had bolstered health funding by an additional $676 million above and beyond what was estimated in the 2019-20 budget. He also spruiked another $685 million had been set aside for the new Women's and Children's Hospital.

Not one extra penny was committed towards the current Women's and Children's Hospital, which frontline clinicians are warning is rapidly losing its world-renowned reputation due to being severely under-resourced. My questions to the minister are:

1. Why hasn't the government heeded the concerns of about 170 doctors who recently made a public plea for more resources by providing more funding to meet the shortages at the existing Women's and Children's Hospital?

2. Why did the government say the current Women's and Children's Hospital was to receive $50 million in funding, money that has already been recommitted several times over up until this stage?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:44): I thank the honourable member for her question. The honourable member is correct to say that there are community groups that are asserting that the Women's and Children's Hospital is significantly under-resourced. In that regard, it was interesting to see a Labor MP release a letter from the federal health minister which highlighted, shall we say, a relative underperformance of the state government in terms of activity-based funding.

It's interesting to look behind those figures and see what has happened over time. The letter from Minister Hunt referred to figures from 2012-13 forward, but when you look at the period where the Labor Party was in power, 2012-13 through to 2017-18, the annual activity-based funding by the state government fell by 3.5 per cent. Under the Marshall Liberal government it has increased by nearly 12 per cent to 2019-20 and, yet again, in this year's budget we have seen an additional allocation of $26 million in terms of the budget, the net cost of programs. So that is a continuing strong performance by this government in investing in the Women's and Children's Hospital.

We do that because we have looked at the services provided by the hospital, looked at the resources that are provided to them and, consistently over the three budgets that the honourable Treasurer has delivered, we have increased resources, and we have increased resources again on this occasion. The alliance might have complaints about the under-resourcing of the Women's and Children's Hospital, but those complaints should be fairly put at the feet of the former Labor government.

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