Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Last year nearly 650,000 people with chronic illness benefited from GP care plans. More than 250,000 people benefited from team care plans coordinated by their GPs, and these team care plans involved more than half a million allied health consultations. Also last year nearly 250,000 senior Australians benefited from comprehensive health checks under Medicare. This means that the government directed nearly $200 million in Medicare funding towards preventative health and chronic disease. That is nearly $200 million directly targeting preventative health and chronic disease under the policies of the Howard government.

I want to make very clear that the Howard government are spending this money through private doctors and through private health professionals. We are not and we will not spend this money building giant socialist bureaucracies or even Christian socialist bureaucracies—that is not our style. Last week I noticed the Leader of the Opposition, who says he is not a socialist and never has been, and who in the past has repeatedly called—

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