Page 1457 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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I would like to see as much money as possible come into our health and education systems. There are no bones about that, and I hope I would be on a unity ticket with those opposite on that. But let us make sure that it is real money. Let us make sure it is allocated dollars in the budget, and let us recognise that that money did not exist. One can refer to the ABC website and go to fact check to see that that money never existed. It was make-believe money.
We want to see more funding for health and more funding for education, and we have seen that. We have seen millions of dollars extra come into real budgets under the term of this federal government. But we will always want more, and in that I am on a unity ticket with those opposite: we always want more into the ACT health and education systems. There is absolutely no doubt about that.
As I referred to at the beginning of my speech, what we are seeing is an attempt by those opposite in government to try to allocate blame, to create fear and to create uncertainty to try to cover up their own failings. It is extraordinary that the individual who would critique anybody on education expenditure is the same individual who cut 23 schools. The same person who is critiquing me now on education expenditure is the same person—Mr Andrew Barr—who, when he was education minister, cut 23 schools in the ACT. Let us never forget it.
Mr Smyth: Wanted to shut 39!
MR HANSON: He did. If there was not resistance and a good argument put forward and a fight from the community and from the Canberra Liberals, 39 schools would have been cut. Mr Andrew Barr cut 23 schools and is now the same person complaining that the federal government is not meeting Labor’s ridiculously cruel illusion of funding that never existed. So let us not have that sort of hypocrisy.
Then we have Mr Corbell complaining about health funding. Real funding has gone up in the budget, and it is Mr Corbell who has cut 60 beds at the University of Canberra public hospital. He has cut 60 beds. The minister before him, Ms Gallagher, cut $41 million from the development of the Canberra Hospital. These people who are cutting and cutting and cutting beds and funding to redevelop our health system are the same people who are trying to blame someone else.
I remind members that, as we saw from the national health performance report last week, it is this lot through their mismanagement and their excesses that are costing us by running the two most inefficient hospitals in Australia. The cost per occasion of service for treatment in the Canberra Hospital is $6,100 when there are like hospitals in Victoria that can do the same for $3,100. That means that tens of millions of dollars that would otherwise be directed to our health system to fund nurses, to fund doctors, to fund hospital beds is being wasted by the mismanagement and incompetence of ACT Labor.
If we were spending that money and we were getting the best service in Australia with the best waiting times in Australia, I would say, “Well, it is worth spending double what every other hospital spends.,” Sadly, that is not true. Sadly, the reality is that you
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