Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You know the place is in trouble when the National Party, that party of agricultural socialists, has been captured by Trump trickle-down economics—the failed economics of the far right, of the HR Nicholls Society. This confirms the fact that the National Party of Australia is now just a bunch of Liberals in big hats. That's all you are—Liberals in big hats. You've lost your country roots completely. To think that these characters over there think that a $65 billion corporate tax cut is going to do anything for people on the ground in country Australia is absolute madness.

There is no better example of this government failing rural and regional Australians than in my own electorate of Lyons, with just 55.3 per cent of 16-year-old kids in the suburb of Brighton in full-time education; youth unemployment at 23.5 per cent; wages averaging $45,000—far lower than the national average; digital inclusion at 45.7 compared to 54.5 for Australia; and a median life expectancy of 70 years of age for men in the Central Highlands in my electorate—14½ years less than those in the Prime Minister's electorate of Wentworth can expect to live. These are big gaps. What is this government doing to address them? It is going to cut $68 million from schools in Tasmania over the next two years; cut $58 million from the University of Tasmania; and keep the Medicare freeze rebate, which makes going to the doctor more expensive and more unaffordable in an electorate of low-income people which has some of the lowest rates of bulk-billing in the country.

In 2014-15, this government spent $910 on Medicare services per individual nationwide, compared to $536 for people in the regions. That is failing regional Australia. Patients presenting to emergency departments requiring urgent medical attention are being left in emergency departments longer. Only 66 per cent of urgent emergency department patients in Tasmania are seen within the recommended 30 minutes. More than half of all public hospital doctors are working unsafe hours, putting them at significant risk of fatigue, including 75 per cent of intensive care specialists. That's failing the people of Tasmania. The Australian Medical Association says:

… the strain and the pressure on our public hospitals is having a detrimental impact on the health of our doctors.

So what's this government's answer to health? To get in the back pockets of the private health insurance lobby.

Pre-tax profits of private health insurers increased 7.3 per cent in the 12 months to 2017. They're raking in $1.86 billion before tax. At the same time, out-of-pocket costs for ordinary Australians and Tasmanians continue to soar. Also, the premiums are going up, but what you can claim is going down. More than 12,000 Australians dropped their cover for hospital treatment in the last three months of 2017. They've been paying for private health insurance, but they know that when they come to claim it they're not going to get what they thought they were paying for. That's failing regional Australia. Out-of-pocket costs on private health insurance claims jumped by 31.7 per cent in just 12 months.

The list just goes on, as the member for Braddon said. We could spend hours here talking about how this government fails regional Australia. The NBN roll-out—where do I start? It's an absolute farce. Under Labor, the fibre-to-the-premises rollout would have covered 93 per cent of premises. It would have been a rollout that would not have left regional Australia behind and that would have seen medical and educational services available to people in regional Australia. What we are seeing under this government is a rollout where people in the town of Lachlan in my electorate—a town of 800 people—can't even get onto the internet in the afternoon when the kids get home from school. It's so slow, at one megabit per second, that they can't even do a speed test to see how slow it is. That's how bad it is under this government.

They are failing on industrial relations—kids not being paid properly for work, the PaTH rip-off for young people. It just goes on. What about biosecurity and the fruit fly incursion in Tasmania? What a massive failure of government it is to allow fruit flies to emerge in our state for the first time ever.

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