Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Charlton on his fine contribution to this debate on the National Health Amendment (Simplified Price Disclosure) Bill 2013 and for highlighting all the important issues in health—particularly the important issues in the Hunter region, part of which is in my electorate of Shortland. We share similar concerns about health in our area and are making sure that the people of our region get the health services they deserve.

I will start by acknowledging the achievements of the last government in the area of health. In government, Labor changed the face of health by implementing the National Health Reform Agreement, which was designed to put $20 billion into hospitals over 10 years. Labor has a proud record in health. We trained more doctors and nurses. We introduced the Dental Health Reform Package. I mention here that the minister opposed the ending of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. I am wondering whether, now that he is government, he wants to re-introduce that scheme. I am asking him to make a commitment to the Dental Health Reform Package, because it is a package that is set to give Australians a level of certainty about the delivery of dental health services that we never had under the Howard government.

We have established Medicare Locals and they have done phenomenal work. In my area, I am covered by two Medicare Locals—the Central Coast Medicare Local and the Hunter Medicare Local. They are at the forefront of everything that happens in the health area in their respective regions. During the recent bushfires in my electorate, the Medicare Local was at the forefront of providing support and help to people who had been isolated and could not return to their homes.

Under Labor, we had a record bulk-billing rate. It was up over 80 per cent. During the Howard years, under 60 per cent of services in the Shortland electorate—an older electorate, an electorate with a fairly low income base—were being bulk billed. As well as the dental reform package I mentioned, Labor introduced the Grow Up Smiling program, a fantastic program. It means that young kids will have their dental health looked after from the time they are two until they are teenagers. Once again, I call on the minister to give us a promise that he will not walk away from that program.

As I mentioned, there are now more GPs and nurses in training than there were under the Howard government. The superclinics, which my colleague the member for Charlton mentioned, have been really well accepted in many areas. Those on the other side like to pull out the odd example of where they are not up and running, but in most areas they are up and running and are greatly appreciated by the local community. We had a package of $3.7 billion for aged care services, and now we do not even have a minister for aged care. And the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing has had ageing taken out of it, so now it is only the health committee. To me, that shows that this government has no real long-term commitment to some very important health areas.

When Labor came to power in 2007 we were faced with a health system that was in crisis. That was highlighted in The blame gamea report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing, which made 29 recommendations and was the blueprint for Labor's reform agenda. I will not go through all the recommendations, but the essence of them was that Australia needed to develop a national health agenda.

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