The Hon. Greg Hunt MP
Minister for Health and Aged Care
MEDIA RELEASE
14 April 2022
Labor’s GP plan falls apart at the seams
Labor’s re-hash of the Rudd super clinics fiasco continues to disintegrate, with Labor admitting the program has not been costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), as previously claimed.
In an embarrassing evening post, Labor’s Finance spokesperson Katy Gallagher was forced to concede that super clinics 2.0 is only based on work done by the PBO, not formally costed by the PBO.
This is in stark contrast to Anthony Albanese’s claims earlier this week that “this policy has been costed, like all about policies by the Parliament. But this has been fully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the PBO.”
Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, said Labor continued to prove their health and economic policies do not stack up.
“This is an embarrassing economic and health backflip for Anthony Albanese and his team,” Minister Hunt said.
“Anthony Albanese said this project was fully costed yesterday. He’s either ill-informed, not across the facts, or have they fudged the figures?”
“You just can’t trust Labor with health, because you can’t trust them with economic management.”
The backflip comes as Labor further scrambles to defend their policy, with the RACGP confirming they were not consulted on the plan, despite Mr Albanese’s assertions to the contrary.
Interviewer: Did Labor consult with you on the policy?
RACGP President, Dr Karen Price: No.
Interview with Sky News, Thursday 14 February 2022.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has also spoken out against the plan, with Dr Omar Khorshid saying the plan was “piecemeal, ill-thought out ideas where they haven’t consulted with general practitioners and emergency doctors.”
AMA Vice President, Dr Chris Moy also said “Labor have a bad track record with GP super clinics which were white elephants and were some of the worst examples of pork barrelling.”
This plan continues to fall apart day by day, and Mr Albanese cannot explain it. If Labor didn’t consult these two peak industry groups, who did they consult?