Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

May I thank the member for Dobell. I appreciate her involvement in the Medicare consultations that I am having across the country. Thank you to the member for Dobell for inviting me to her electorate to meet with doctors and other health professionals. We are a government that listens. We are a government that has heard. We are a government that consults. And that is, may I say, part of the process of government. I said from the outset that in this policy area I wanted to pause to consult, and that is exactly what I have done. I have met with doctors in their practices, from Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, Bundaberg, Tasmania, north-east Victoria and in my own electorate of western New South Wales, and the consultations have been extensive, and they are not over yet. I will travel to Western Australia when the House rises at the end of this week to continue these discussions.

To ensure that we protect Medicare for the long term, the government will be proceeding with its pause on indexation of Medicare rebates for GP and non-GP items while we work with the professions to develop future policies. This is actually a measure that Labor introduced and we are continuing with. When it was pointed out by a journalist yesterday that Labor introduced this measure, the member for Ballarat said, 'We did, and we will own that we did freeze rebates.' Thank you very much, member for Ballarat. However, as part of my consultations, it is clear the proposal for an optional $5 co-payment does not have broad support. The measure will therefore not proceed and has been taken permanently off the table. I look forward to having much more to say about the government's policy position as my national consultations continue, because those consultations have made one thing very clear, and that is that doing nothing is not an option. Medicare is growing at an unsustainable rate. Spending on Medicare has more than doubled in the past decade. The proportion of that spend that is being provided by the Medicare levy is falling every year. While the Leader of the Opposition refuses to acknowledge that Medicare is unsustainable, his shadow health minister actually has called him out.

This is Labor's year of doing nothing. They only ever take the easy way out. It is time for Labor to pull their heads out of the sand and get serious with the Australian public. Our approach is listening, consulting and working for quality and sustainability.

See this speech in context