Australia's Labor pledges $528m to slash hospital emergency waiting times

Australia's opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten speaks in Sydney. Photo / AP

Australia's Opposition leader Bill Shorten announced a A$500 million ($528m) health promise, saying he "knows what that's like" to be stuck in a hospital waiting room.

Shorten used Labor's official election campaign launch to underline the provision of services over tax cuts for big business.

The Labor leader pledged A$500m to upgrade and expand emergency facilities at public hospitals should he gain government on May 18.

He also outlined proposals to get more taxes out of multinationals, and to pay for extra health services instead of "bigger tax loopholes for the top end of town".

"Chloe and I know what it's like to sit inside the emergency department, holding your child in the middle of the night," he said, referring to his wife. "Most parents know what that's like, and every parent fears it."

The proposed spending would be part of a "health dividend" Labor is promising, in contrast to the tax cuts being offered by the Coalition.

The official launch in Brisbane heared from Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and Senate leader Penny Wong. In part this was a demonstration to argue the ALP doesn't have a "women's problem" while the Liberals do. All remaining former Labor prime ministers except the ailing Bob Hawke — Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard — were there. Labor is working hard to promote an image of unity. Gillard and Rudd haven't been pictured together since their very public falling out.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has condemned those responsible for defacing some of his political posters with Nazi symbols in his Victorian seat of Kooyong. The posters were graffitied with Hitler moustaches, devil horns and the words "right-wing fascist". Frydenberg, who is Jewish, said: "It was an insult to all the victims of the Holocaust and to every Australian service man and woman who served in our armed forces against tyranny." Two other candidates — the Greens' Steph Hodgins-May and independent Oliver Yates — have had their posters graffitied with Nazi symbolism in Melbourne.