A Shorten Labor Government will invest $160 million to upgrade and expand emergency departments and slash ED waiting times in New South Wales.

Twenty per cent of people who present to EDs in NSW are not seen within clinically recommended times.

For urgent patients, that number rises to 24 per cent.

That will only get worse if Scott Morrison is re-elected on 18 May because he plans to cut $854 million from our public hospitals over the next six years.

This is equivalent to:

• 211 beds a year for six years.
• 586 doctors a year for six years.
• 1,200 nurses a year for six years.
• 1.3 million ED visits.
• 2.1 million outpatient visits.
• 237,000 cataract extractions.
• 32,830 knee replacements.

Under Labor, NSW hospitals will be an estimated $1.09 billion better off.

That’s the combined total of NSW’s share of our Better Hospitals Fund – which reverses the Liberal cuts of the next six years – our new investment in driving down ED waiting times, and our separate investment in cancer patient waiting times.

Labor has already committed nearly $300 million for hospital capital projects in NSW including:

• Nepean Hospital $125 million.
• Peakhurst HealthOne $10 million.
• Eurobodalla Hospital $25 million.
• Shoalhaven Hospital $35 million.
• Campbelltown Hospital paediatric ICU $10 million.
• Hawkesbury Hospital - ED expansion $2.5 million.
• Children's Medical Research Institute $21 million.
• Concord Hospital $50 million.
• Woy Woy palliative care $20 million.

 
In NSW, a Shorten Labor Government will also link 11 hospitals to our National Telestroke Network, and provide two new Camp Quality Liaison Officers, 19 specialist cancer nurses, nine new Red Cross Milk Banks and four additional Medicare MRI licences.

NSW will also benefit from other elements of Labor’s $2.3 billion Medicare Cancer Plan, as well as our $2.4 billion Pensioner Dental Plan.