“This is excuse after excuse because Labor cannot manage money,” Crozier said.

“You don’t expect a major cancer centre in the far reaches of Victoria, but you do expect basic services and hospitals to be supported so that they can support their communities. That’s who will suffer once these amalgamations occur and the loss of services happen.”

The Allan government has written to the state’s health services to spruik the $8.8 billion in spending contained in last week’s budget, but also warn that hospitals have a role to play in reining in rising cost blowouts.

One letter, seen by The Age, made clear no further funding would be provided beyond what was committed in the budget.

Australian Medical Association Victoria’s vice-president Dr Simon Judkins, who works as a rural health clinician, said coming to the end of the financial year, many health services had already reached their funding cap.

“[But] you can’t stop doing the clinical work because it’s still going to turn up. You still got people who need elective surgery, you still got people that need emergency surgery, people are still delivering babies,” he said.

However, Judkins said his personal view was that the concept of mergers had some “clear benefits” if done collaboratively, and could save some costs.

“We have [76] different health services. They are creating their own rules,” he said.

“I look at colleagues who work in Queensland for example, and they have got one health record and one pathology service that everyone can link into.”

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The debate over the potential mergers came as shadow treasurer Brad Roswell delivered his official budget reply speech in parliament.

In the speech, the Liberal frontbencher recommitted the Coalition to legislating a debt cap, establishing a local productivity commission, rolling back payroll taxes on non-government schools and the extension of payroll tax to independent GPs.

“To those businesses and to those investors who are considering leaving Victoria because of the pressure of Labor’s taxes, I say to them, ‘please, please stick with us’,” Rowswell said.

“Labor will not always be in charge. It won’t always be like this. The next election in Victoria is 2½ years away, and change is coming.”