Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I encourage you to have an open mind on that matter. As parliamentarians, we have got to leave ourselves open to the possibility of persuasion.

Before the debate was adjourned, I had some passionate things to say about what I believed to be the absence of a plan for jobs, industry and employment in the government's program. I was passionate about that because I am watching around the area that I represent and immediately adjacent to that people are losing their jobs, industry, particularly the Australian paper mill is closing down and people that I know are losing their jobs. It is hitting those towns very hard.

I also want to repeat the observation that these appropriation bills are effectively a part of the budget making process. They are a requirement for the parliament to authorise the approval of additional funds for the purposes set out in the budget and for the government to reallocate funds where they think they have got something wrong, where unanticipated things have come up between the budget making process in May last year and where we are today. In that light, I have to say, they are a perfect opportunity for members of the government to revisit some of the harsh measures within the budget and attempt to persuade their cabinet colleagues of the wrongheadedness of those measures.

Nowhere is that requirement for persuasion of the members of the government and the cabinet more important than in the area of health, because, if there is a set of initiatives that have galvanised the opposition to what the government is proposing to do, it is in the area of health. The $55 billion worth of cuts to the health system is having a knock-on effect right around the country.

In my own state of New South Wales, we are seeing the situation brought to light by the Australian Medical Association this very week, where hospitals facing a shortfall of $17 billion are effectively having to become fundraisers just to provide the same sorts of services that they were providing five, six or seven years ago, because of the federal government funding cuts. Seventeen billion dollars is a lot of cake drives. That is a lot of sausage sizzles. It is simply going to be beyond the capacity of many communities, particularly communities such as mine, where they do not have the capacity for that private fundraising, to make up the shortfall from the federal government and the state government funding cuts.

So I am using this opportunity to call upon members of the government to put as much pressure as they can on their frontbench colleagues and say, 'These budget proposals must be axed.' They cannot continue. The cuts to the health and hospital system, coupled with the proposed changes to Medicare, are having a devastating impact upon communities such as mine, and they must be dumped. When it comes to the GP tax, we have had GP tax mark 1, GP tax mark 2, GP tax mark 3—in fact, as I was preparing to come down to parliament this week, I counted no less than four health policies that have been adopted and then dumped by this government inside a 2½-month period. That is right: no less than four health policies adopted and then dumped by this government in a four-month period.

I am asking members opposite—in fact, I am asking the government—to rethink this. It is the wrong approach. The consideration of these appropriation bills is an opportunity for the government to say: 'We got it wrong. We've heard the Australian people, and we are going to dump these wrongheaded policies.'

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