… AND NEGLECTING TASMANIANS
This week Senate Estimates witnessed a lackadaisical and visionless Government bereft of any policy agenda when it comes to healthcare and aged care.
The Health Department confirmed that there is no plan by the Government to reverse Malcolm Turnbull’s savage cuts to Medicare.
Instead, Malcolm Turnbull’s most senior health bureaucrat confirmed that each and every one of Malcolm Turnbull’s damaging health cuts, Medicare cuts and cuts to pathology and diagnostic imaging taken to the election all remain Government policy.
The Government’s disregard for older Tasmanians was further entrenched when Government officials stonewalled and refused to provide any substance to any questions regarding aged care funding – which is the biggest issue currently facing the sector.
The Government has slashed aged care funding by billions but is still refusing to release financial modelling, despite requests from the aged care sector and an FOI request from Labor. Instead we learnt that the Government has secretly shared the “parameters” of these cuts with a select few in the sector.
Unsurprisingly, division is still running rampant within the Turnbull Government this week – we saw the Prime Minister entertaining the idea that he was willing to horse trade on the ban on a firearm for industrial reform, and we saw a Prime Minister in bitter disagreement with the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
In Tasmania we learnt that the Turnbull Liberal Government will make taxpayer’s foot a $1 million bill for its failure to place any Liberal representatives in the North West of Tasmania.
SENATOR HELEN POLLEY SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE LEADER (TASMANIA) SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR AGEING SENATOR FOR TASMANIA
