It's a charge with an impressive lineage. Wayne Swan, Lindsay Tanner, Penny Wong, Nicola Roxon, Tanya Plibersek and Julia Gillard have all repeated it. It was even printed on a 2010 Labor campaign leaflet. It read: "Tony Abbott cut $1 billion from health and hospitals. Don't let Abbott cut health funding again." Supporting evidence It goes back to the 2003 budget. It delivered not a cut in hospital funding (as Rudd says) or a cut in health and hospital funding (as Labor says) but an increase in hospital funding for the next five-year intergovernmental agreement. The increase was around $1 billion less than had been foreshadowed a year earlier, but it was an increase nonetheless. The 2003 budget papers explained the increase in funding for public hospitals was less than had been foreshadowed partly because "more services are being provided in private hospitals following the introduction of the government's 30 per cent private health insurance rebate". How it stacks up

It was an increase, not a cut. Under the new agreement, states were offered “up to an additional $10 billion to help run public hospitals,” but instead of being offered up to $43 billion as had been foreshadowed they were offered up to $42 billion. It was a "cut" only in the sense that someone who is led to believe they will get a pay rise and then doesn't get all of it believes they have had a pay cut. And Abbott wasn't the health minister at the time. He was the minister for employment and workplace relations. Abbott became health and ageing minister on October 7 2003, five months after the 2003 budget and one month after the last of the disgruntled state and territory health ministers signed up to the new agreement. Kay Patterson was the health minister who stared down the states in the bitter and protracted dispute, a fact Rudd tacitly acknowledged on Sunday night when he used convoluted language to say Abbott took "$1 billion out of hospital funding for the states at a time when he had responsibility to oversee that expenditure".

Abbott didn't set up the agreement that was worth $1 billion less than expected. He merely presided over it. Statistics compiled by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that under Abbott, commonwealth funding of public hospitals climbed 4 per cent in 2003-4, 7 per cent in 2004-5, 4 per cent in 2005-6 and 6 per cent in 2006-7. Finding Tony Abbott neither “took $1 billion out of hospital funding for the states” nor presided over a cut. The charge is serious and personal.

A PolitiFact rating of "false" applies where a statement is not accurate. PolitiFact rates Kevin Rudd's claim that Tony Abbott took $1 billion out of hospital funding for the states "false". Details at www.politifact.com.au Loading Fairfax is partnering with the Pulitzer-prize winning service PolitiFact during the election campaign. Its Australian arm politifact.com.au uses the same rigorous methodology as its US parent to rate the accuracy of claims by elected officials and other influential people in the Australian political debate.

Twitter: @1petermartin @PolitiFactOz