The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has said he is prepared to sit down and work “constructively” with state premiers on the need for more hospital funding, but has ruled out making any grand funding promises before the election.
Speaking in Queensland alongside the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, Albanese said he was aware of the pressure facing the state hospital system, but he was taking a “measured” approach in the campaign.
“What we will do is sit down with premiers constructively and work these issues through,” Albanese said.
“We know the pressure that’s there on the hospital systems. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve put forward, for example, urgent care clinics. Urgent care clinics are aimed at taking pressure off emergency departments, because we know that emergency departments are under such pressure.
“But the other thing that we’re doing is being upfront in our discussions with the premiers – we’re not promising things in advance and then we’ll say something different after the election campaign.”
Albanese said he wanted to be “very responsible, very measured” in his policy proposals given the “trillion dollars in debt” racked up by the Coalition that he would inherit in government.
Palaszczuk and all state and territory leaders have been pushing the federal government to permanently lift the commonwealth’s funding guarantee to a 50-50 funding split beyond June 2023 when the current arrangement ends.
The cost to the commonwealth is estimated at about $5bn extra a year.
The Australian Medical Association has also been pushing for the extra 5% funding boost, saying the logjam affecting the country’s hospitals was leading to unnecessary deaths and delays for surgery.
Palaszczuk said it was “no secret” that all of the state premiers and health ministers of both Liberal and Labor governments wanted an increase in health funding.
“We’ve had two years of a global pandemic. It’s put pressure on our hospitals. I know with Anthony, he will listen. He will listen and he will conduct a listening exercise and look at those gaps and we’ll be able to work with him, not someone who won’t even allow it to be on the agenda at national cabinet.”
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has said that when the current pandemic-level hospital funding agreement ended in September, the state faced an effective cut of $1.5bn.
“I would again, urge the prime minister and the federal treasurer to reconsider that $1.5bn cut to health that occurs in September,” Andrews said.
Andrews said pent-up demand for health services that would emerge as the country came out of the pandemic would add to the strain on the state’s hospital network, which is already dealing with ambulance delays and lengthy call-wait times for the triple-zero service.
The hot-button issue was also central to the recent South Australian election, with new Labor premier Peter Malinauskas ending Steven Marshall’s government after just one term by promising to fix the state’s ramping crisis.
In Western Australia, ambulance ramping – the term used to describe the time ambulances wait outside hospitals as a result of bed block – doubled in 2021 even without the demand of Covid admissions on the state hospital system.
At the last election, Bill Shorten promised to lift the commonwealth’s share of hospital funding to 50%, but came under fire from the Coalition for its large suite of policy offerings with a scare campaign focused on the “Bill you can’t afford”.
Albanese’s policy offering at this election is deliberately small-target, with Labor reluctant to walk in to another scare campaign about how it would pay for promises in health and education.
For health, the party is promising $135m for 50 new urgent care clinics that are designed to operate as an after-hours GP service to reduce hospital presentations for things such as cuts and burns. However, the AMA has said the policy will do little to reduce the strain on the country’s hospitals, with these patients not the cause of the bed block in the system.
