"Providers and workforce are thinner on the ground and hospitals are smaller in regional Australia, meaning Labor's neglect is felt significantly and inequitably in the regions.

A question a Senate inquiry might ask stakeholders is whether they specifically wanted a broad general prohibition, as this government has put forward. Consumer stakeholders may have wanted action taken.

There are 200,000 elderly Australians waiting to get assessed or to receive home-care support. Last time we checked, 5,000 people had died waiting to get onto aged-care support.

TOPICS: Federal Budget health spending, private health insurance rebate cut, aged care beds and services, private hospital viability

Mallee families are also feeling the pain of wages not keeping up with Labor’s inflation, with the Budget revealing the buying power of Australians’ wages has declined by 3 per cent under this government.“

TOPICS: Federal Budget, capital gains tax, negative gearing, bracket creep, regional connectivity lack of investment, Urgent Care Clinics, regional health solutions, 3G shutdown impacts, Home Medicine Review program, road funding and more

This government has run out of its own money to spend and therefore is coming for, in this instance, our older folk, our over-65s. It is raiding the private health fund to, apparently, pay for aged care a little bit later.

TOPICS: Federal Budget, housing policy, capital gains tax, negative gearing, Senator Price speech on Kumanjayi Little Baby, child protection, spending in indigenous organisations

TOPICS: Farrer by-election result, regional health, federal budget