This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labor has promised to spend $500m to cut public hospital wait times for cancer treatment.

The policy, released on Tuesday, is part of the $2.3bn cancer package unveiled by Bill Shorten in his budget reply.

With the election expected to be called by the end of the week, Labor is leaning on promises of higher social spending as a key point of difference with the Coalition and the cancer package allows the opposition to re-run its successful Medicare campaign from the 2016 election – this time with a positive bent.

The Coalition has attacked Labor’s record of failing to list cancer treatments when last in government – which Shorten has vowed not to repeat – but has yet to explain if it will match Labor’s cancer package.

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On Monday Scott Morrison suggested the government would try to do so, telling 2GB Radio it would “look carefully” at the package “because we will all stand with those … with those who are suffering with cancer”, which “should be above politics”.

Morrison said that cancer treatment in public hospitals was already free but noted there were “out-of-pocket expenses for those doing it privately and I think that’s worth acknowledging”.

In a statement Shorten and the shadow health minister, Catherine King, said that average wait times for elective surgery have increased in every state and territory, which they blamed on “Liberal cuts to health and hospitals” at the federal level.

“When people are sick, the last thing they need is to sit on long waiting lists watching the clock for the treatment they need,” they said. “One in 10 Australians will have to wait an average 47 days to get a breast lump removed or checked.

“Eighty-three per cent of people who receive a positive result from the government’s bowel screening program don’t undergo a colonoscopy within the recommended time.”

Labor committed to spend the $500m to reduce waiting times through a national partnership agreement with the states on cancer care. It comes on top of Labor’s commitment to spend $2.8bn more over eight years on hospitals.

Labor has said the $2.3bn cancer package would provide more Australians with free care in public hospitals, reduce wait times, ensure fewer patients are forced the private system and reduce out-of-pocket costs for others by boosting competition from the public system.

In December, the Coalition offered a $1.25bn increase in public hospital funding over four years, in a bid to neutralise Labor’s claims it would spend more on health.

On Monday Morrison told reporters in Yatala that the Coalition had provided a 60% increase in spending on hospitals since it won government, and an increase of 27% spending on Medicare with “the highest level of bulk-billing that our country has ever seen”.

The 2019 budget shows that total health spending is expected to increase from $81.8bn a year in 2019-29 to $89.5bn in 2022-23. But Labor points to the funding formula change announced in the 2014 budget, which cut project funding to the states by a total of $30bn.

The other elements of the Labor cancer package include $600m to improve access to and affordability of diagnostic imaging, and a further $433m to fund a new bulk-billed Medicare item for consultations with oncologists and surgeons for Australians diagnosed with cancer.