State and territory leaders have launched a coordinated attack on the Albanese Government’s handling of increasingly strained public hospital funding negotiations, declaring they cannot sacrifice hospital care to bolster the Commonwealth’s budget bottom line. Source: ABC News.
As tensions continued to flare over the deal, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese countered with a warning that if the states and territories do not “engage constructively” in negotiations, they could languish on interim funding deals for another year.
Ongoing negotiations over the hospital agreement have been posing a headache for the federal Government, with the ABC this week revealing Mr Albanese had written to the premiers and chief ministers, telling them to rein in hospital spending growth if they wanted a 2023 Commonwealth funding agreement implemented.
State and territory leaders yesterday convened an emergency Council for the Australian Federation meeting to discuss the issue, led by Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff.
They argued that a deal for the Commonwealth to take on a greater share of public hospital funding had already been agreed and should be honoured.
“Premiers and first ministers met today. They expressed concern about how the federal Government is approaching health and disability funding negotiations,” Mr Rockliff said yesterday.
“States cannot cut public hospital activity to suit the federal Government’s bottom line.”
In 2023, the national cabinet agreed the Commonwealth would lift its funding share to 42.5 per cent by the end of the decade and then to 45 per cent by 2035.
But the states have since accused the federal Government of trying to walk back that commitment and are currently relying on an interim one-year funding top-up to tide them over as they negotiate the long-overdue, five-year deal.
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States launch coordinated attack on federal handling of public hospital negotiations (By Stephanie Dalzell, ABC News)
