The PM tied Commonwealth hospital funding for the states to the states’ agreement to provide foundational disability supports. Sneaky.
According to a bombshell media report, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ordered federal health minister Mark Butler to halt negotiations on the new National Health Reform Agreement for six months last year in a bid to bully the states into agreeing to funding foundational disability supports.
The Saturday Paper alleged that Mr Albanese “shut down critical negotiations over hospital funding in order to gain leverage over the redistribution of NDIS costs” between June and November of 2024.
The states refused to sign anything as they battled to find out “what foundational disability supports they should be funding and whether their budgets could sustain the investment at a time when hospitals were under severe strain”.
“I think [Health Minister] Mark Butler was under pretty strict orders from Albo to pause the negotiations because the state premiers, lobbied by their treasurers, went in and argued, ‘You can’t do this, we don’t know how much we’re up for anyway,’” a former minister was quoted by the Saturday Paper as saying.
In a statement to HSD, Mr Butler said:
“For too long we’ve seen governments stuck in trench warfare playing the blame game on hospital funding,” he said.
“This infuriates Australians when all they want is to make sure they don’t spend hours ramped in an ambulance or waiting in an overcrowded emergency department.
“The final hospital agreement will ensure hospitals, aged care, disability care and general practices are working more effectively together to get better outcomes. The Commonwealth has put $17.8 billion of additional funding on the table for states and territories as part of negotiations for the new agreement.”
That $17.8 billion would be split between eight jurisdictions over several years.
The original NHRA planned for Commonwealth funding to rise to 50% of “efficient growth” from 2017-18, but the Morrison government watered that down to a target of 45% beyond 2016-17.
The federal contribution share grew only to 40.3% by 2022-23. Mr Albanese’s government agreed to at least reach 45% in practice by 2035, with a target of 42.5% by the end of the decade.
“It was getting pretty close [to a deal] and we all thought it was going to get done, like, last year,” a minister told the Saturday Paper.
“And then Albo linked it to the foundational supports. And then, of course, all the state treasurers were like, ‘Oh, we can’t sign anything, we don’t know how much it’s gonna cost.’”