Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before the last election we were told by the Prime Minister there would be no cuts to health. In budget 2014 we got five different versions of the GP tax. It started off as a $7 GP tax, which would have stopped one million people from going to the doctor in the following year if it had been implemented. We had $60 billion in cuts. We had the abolition of Medicare Locals. After all of this he said, on 3 March 2015: 'We are determined this government will be, as a former government was, the best friend Medicare ever had.'

What we find in this year's budget? We find that those suffering from PKU have had a very small $250-a-month grant removed in the fine print of this budget. They have abolished the GP after-hours health line that took 200 calls last year; $125 million from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule; $144 million from the MBS; about $70 million from the DVA; $70 million from health workforce scholarships; $214 million from e-health, not a single dollar allocated beyond 2018; $250 million out of PBS listed drugs; another $2 billion out of health, on top of the $60 billion they took last year; and $1 billion out of preventative health care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health and other crucial health programs. This is a government that is no friend of Medicare at all.