TRANSCRIPT
ABC RADIO SYDNEY MORNINGS WITH HAMISH MACDONALD
20 November 2025
Topics: The Prime Minister’s broken promise on hospital funding and failure to negotiate with the States, the Coalition’s energy policy
E&OE…………………………………
HAMISH MACDONALD: We have invited the Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, to come and speak to you this morning. He's declined. The Shadow Health Minister in the Federal Parliament is Senator Anne Ruston. Good morning to you.
ANNE RUSTON: Good morning, Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Is the Federal Government well within its rights to say to the States, if you want more money, you've got to rein in spending?
ANNE RUSTON: Look, what we're seeing here is a Prime Minister who made a promise two years ago to support the States and Territories to maintain their hospitals and he's now seeking to walk back from that promise. You know, this is a Prime Minister who seems to be quite happy to make headline announcements that make him look good, but when it comes to actually delivering on those promises, he's walking away from them. 42.5% contribution by the Federal Government to hospitals – [a promise] made in 2023 – and today he's telling the States and Territories they have to rein in spending. I mean, who's ever heard of rationing care in our hospital systems? This is an outrageous thing for the Prime Minister to be doing.
HAMISH MACDONALD: So, do you see it as a broken promise? Do you think the States are within their rights to be angry?
ANNE RUSTON: Absolutely. The States and Territories were made an absolutely rock-solid promise by the Prime Minister two years ago, and then they failed to negotiate the hospital funding agreement, which is the National Health Reform Agreement, last year. The Prime Minister is now threatening the States and Territories and saying, well, if they don't come to the party and do what he wants, he won't give them their funding going forward. I mean, this is a Prime Minister that has to honour his promises, not just to the States and Territories, but to the Australian public.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Do you have a view about how this would impact Sydney hospitals? Like I suspect those listening will see a political stoush. I suspect voters not particularly impressed by that sort of thing, whatever shape it takes. What will this mean though for us if we turn up at a hospital?
ANNE RUSTON: Well, this is the thing that is probably most concerning is if you start rationing the amount of money that you're providing to hospitals, well, of course they're going to have to be making decisions in relation to the care they provide. We already know that elective surgeries – which are not actually elective, they're just non-life-threatening surgeries – the wait lists on those, like knee replacements or cataract surgery and the like, are already being delayed by many, many months, sometimes years for people who desperately, desperately need them. So I think this is where the Prime Minister has to be called out for the implications of his decisions, and also the implications of the fact that we've got nearly 1,200 people in New South Wales alone in hospital beds who have been approved for discharge, medical discharge, but are there because the Federal Government hasn't provided support for home care. So there's a lot of things that could be done here by the Federal Government to help the States and fix the problem.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Is there a bit more nuance to this, though? Because, as I understand it, when National Cabinet agreed to this new funding deal for public hospitals, the deal was, yes, that the Commonwealth would increase its share of funding, but that would happen in exchange for the States and Territories co-funding some of these new services that would sit outside of the NDIS, particularly for young people living with autism, for example, and that there hasn't been a deal on that because the State Ministers sent the Federal Minister out of the meeting where they were trying to discuss this because they didn't like what she was putting forward.
ANNE RUSTON: Well, once again, we've got a government that's addicted to making headline announcements but not very good at delivering. So the Prime Minister and his Health Minister went out and made promises around providing these new foundational supports for people who live with mild to moderate developmental conditions – that was made two years ago. And then, without telling the States and Territories what he was doing, the Federal Minister goes and makes an announcement about Thriving Kids, which is a new program particularly designed to help that group of young Australians. No discussion with the States and Territories, no discussion about how it was going to be paid for, no discussion about other people – [interrupted].
HAMISH MACDONALD: But that's the bit that I'm getting at. I thought there was agreement by National Cabinet back in 2023, as part of this hospital funding agreement, that the States and Territories would absorb some of that cost for those new services.
ANNE RUSTON: That was the deal that was put on the table that was agreed to. Since then, what we've seen is the Federal Government walking back its commitment on both cases. Firstly, in relation to the amount being provided for hospital funding, and secondly, about bringing the States and Territories along about this co-design program in relation to supporting these very vulnerable young Australians. So, this is basically a failure of the Federal Government to be able to negotiate with the States and Territories. And many of these States and Territories are of the same persuasion as the Federal Government. There are many Labor governments around Australia. So Anthony Albanese is failing to even negotiate with his own colleagues in the Labor Party and Australians will be the ones who pay the price for it.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Senator Anne Ruston is here, the Shadow Health Minister. You've been referenced quite a bit in the newspapers in recent weeks around all of the negotiations on net zero. You're the leading moderate in the Federal Parliament now. How comfortable are you with this idea of underwriting or supporting the construction of new coal-fired power stations?
ANNE RUSTON: Well, we know right now one of the biggest problems we've got in our energy market and the reason Australians are paying so much for their power bills is because we're restricting what goes into our energy mix. What we've said is that we want every single source of energy to stabilise our energy grid, and if that means sweating our coal assets, which we know some of the States and Territories are already investing in, that is a good thing. But in the longer term – [interrupted].
HAMISH MACDONALD: That's different though to building new ones or supporting the construction of new coal-fired power stations, which is what your new position seems to be.
ANNE RUSTON: Keeping coal in the system until such time as it's adequately replaced by other forms of reliable generation is a good thing, but there is no blank check and there is no plan to fund new coal-fired power plants into the future.
HAMISH MACDONALD: And you'd be comfortable, though, if someone wanted to build one with public money being used to do that?
ANNE RUSTON: Well, what we're saying is in the future we don't want any public money invested in our system. We need a strong enough energy system that is driven by market demand as to how Australians and Australian businesses want to buy their energy, so that we have got a system that is actually incentivising the kinds of energy sources that we think will be into the future. So as I said, there is no plans into the future, in the longer-term, to build new coal-fired power plants and there is absolutely no intention for that to be funded by the public purse.
HAMISH MACDONALD: And are you totally comfortable with the way this is all being delivered by the Coalition at the moment, the selling of this new policy you've landed on?
ANNE RUSTON: The one thing that I have heard every single time I go out into the community is people are struggling with the cost of living and the biggest part of that is their energy bills. And when you speak to businesses, the thing that they tell you is the reason they're struggling to be viable is because of the cost of their energy. Something has to be done about that. And I think making sure that we put affordable and reliable energy at the very centre of our policy going forward is the right thing for Australian families and businesses.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Senator Anne Ruston, thanks for your time this morning.
ANNE RUSTON: My pleasure. Thanks, Hamish.
ENDS
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