Newly released cabinet papers reveal that senior Howard government ministers authorized almost $4 billion in spending during the final hours of Parliament before the 2004 federal election.
Cabinet papers released on 1 January show senior ministers signed off on funding the day parliament was dissolved before the October 2004 election. The day parliament was dissolved for the 2004 federal election, senior Howard government ministers met to authorise almost $4bn in sweeteners to announce during the election campaign.
A cabinet minute from 31 August 2004 records that three of the biggest spending promises Howard announced in the five ensuing weeks were signed off at that meeting in the government’s final hours. Released by the National Archives on 1 January, the records of cabinet’s deliberations throughout 2004 show Howard and his colleagues were acutely conscious of the politics of their decisions as they prepared to seek re-election. In that 11th-hour meeting, a pared-down cabinet of unnamed “senior ministers” allocated more than $1.7bn to increase the Medicare rebate for all GP visits from 85% to 100%, to take effect from the following January. They spent another $1bn for a new tax rebate of up to $500 for mature-age workers – backdated to 1 July – and $83m increasing the rebate for local medical services to veterans from 100% to 115% of the schedule fee. That was on top of a veterans’ access payment which Howard had authorised the day before. The previous day, cabinet’s national security committee had directed that legislation be drafted to implement the recommendations of a recently completed national intelligence review and authorised millions of dollars in extra funding for agencies.Speaking last month ahead of the release, Howard noted that then, as now, Australians were under financial pressure in an election year. “The cost of living was all-pervasive,” Howard recalled. “And although things have changed a lot, one thing hasn’t changed and that is the dominance of cost of living as a pervasive political issue”
ELECTION FUNDING CABINET MEDICAL COST OF LIVING
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