Chief Minister Katy Gallagher says the ACT government will not savage the territory’s health system to fund a $47 million budget black hole caused by federal funding cuts, but has warned those losses will need to be made up somewhere.
Ms Gallagher warned budget cuts by the federal government would leave the ACT’s health system about $240 million worse off over the next four years.
“These are cuts that we can’t absorb, but we’re certainly not going to cut services that impact on families here in Canberra,” she said. “We are not prepared to savage our health system to recoup those cuts.”
Speaking after a tour of the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Ms Gallagher said it was yet to be determined whether the losses would be absorbed through the health system or come from somewhere else.
Although health funding did not take a huge hit in Tuesday’s budget, whether that remains the case in future budgets is not yet known.
Despite this, Ms Gallagher has all but ruled out a reduction of beds at facilities such as Centenary Hospital, which she said was an important regional hospital.
“The question is whether it comes out of the health system or out of the budget,” Ms Gallagher said. “At the moment it’s been on our bottom line, we’re wearing it on our deficit, but that can’t continue for ever so we’re going to have to look at where we recover that money from.
“I don’t think anybody believes we can start shutting beds here. We’ve got more babies being born here than ever before so it’s not really an option of closing off beds and saving money that way. It’s a big challenge for us and we’ve got a lot of work to do in the next 12 months.”
Mr Shorten said healthcare would be adversely affected by the federal budget.
“We’ve met parents, we’ve seen the work of dedicated staff helping rescue little lives and give a great future for all of Canberra,” Mr Shorten said.
“We are very, very concerned that this ugly budget of Tony Abbott’s will damage the future healthcare of all Australians. You cannot give quality healthcare like we see here [at Centenary Hospital] on a cut-price budget built upon lies and broken promises.”
Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton said budget papers showed funding for ACT hospitals would increase from $271 million in 2013-14 to $328 million this year.
“Mr Shorten simply cannot be trusted – a lesson learnt by both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd at different stages,” Mr Dutton said.
“It seems he still considers it sound economic policy to keep racking up billions of dollars on the credit card with no plan to pay it back. If that’s not the case, I call on Mr Shorten to stop scaremongering and explain what that plan actually is.”
He also asked the Chief Minister to explain why Canberra Hospital had failed to meet its emergency department targets despite receiving increased funding.
“Only 54 per cent of patients departed the Canberra Hospital emergency department within four hours of arriving,” he said. “That is more than 10 per cent below its target, which itself is the lowest of all the targets agreed to in Australia.”
Source: The Age