Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For almost the entire time this government has been in office, it has been an absolute disaster. It has been a disaster for the economy, a disaster for education, a disaster for manufacturing and especially a disaster for health. But, sadly, the member for Wentworth is making clear that all the Liberal Party has done is put a different colour tie on the leader at the dispatch box. Only this week, he declared, of the government's disastrous first budget, 'We support all of our policies and all of our measures.' In other words, nothing has changed since the member for Wentworth told Alan Jones that he supports unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element of the 2014 and 2015 budgets—every single one.

So the test for this Prime Minister is not persuading just over half his colleagues that he is a better salesman; it is persuading the Australian people that he has a better product to sell, and that means abandoning the four-year freeze on the Medicare benefits schedule on general practice that is already wreaking havoc on patients across the country, forcing doctors to raise their fees and to cut bulk-billing. The test is to get rid of the $1.3-billion hike on prescriptions and the test is getting rid of the $270-million cut to the Medicare Safety Net, which will see cancer patients having to pay up to $10,000 extra for their radiation oncology and people seeking fertility treatment, trying to have a baby, paying up to $15,000 extra. Shame this government. (Time expired)