Peter Gutwein,Treasurer
Once again the Federal Member for Clark, Andrew Wilkie, who will never have the responsibility of running government, is playing politics with Tasmanians' health. It's time he told the whole truth.
The best indicator on health spending is how much of the overall State Budget is actually spent on health.
Under the Hodgman Liberal Government health spending as a percentage of the entire State Budget is 32 per cent, the second highest in the nation and up from 25 per cent a decade ago.
The Tasmanian Government, like all state and territory governments, must achieve the right balance in allocating the funds it has available to the high priority areas including health, infrastructure, education and law and order.
As GST is apportioned to the Tasmanian Government as general revenue, not as an Australian Government grant or a Special Purpose Payment, grant and funding deals diminish the distribution amount.
So the key question is which of these areas is Mr Wilkie advocating to have funding diverted away from?
Mr Wilkie also conveniently fails to mention that the $340 million RHH agreement he entered into with the former Federal Labor Government in 2010, was not excluded from GST entitlement calculations for Tasmania.
This has meant that almost all of that funding has effectively been redistributed to other states through reductions in our GST allocations!
Because of Mr Wilkie's limited understanding of how the GST works, Tasmania has funded almost the entirety of the $780 million cost to build the new Royal Hobart Hospital because of Mr Wilkie's ignorance.
Regardless of commentary from the cheap seats, the Hodgman Liberal Government is investing a record $8.1 billion into health and hospitals and is getting on with the job of investing in Tasmania's major hospitals.
