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

I too rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2014-2015 and cognate bills representing the Abbott government's federal budget. This is indeed a budget of broken promises and, in my area of health, one that launches fundamental attack on the fabric of Medicare. The Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no cuts to health. He didn't just say it once; he said it many, many times. He promised before the election that there would be no new taxes. At no time during the election campaign did the Prime Minister telling the Australian people that they would be paying more to see a doctor, more from their medicines, more to access a specialist and that he would gut funding for public hospitals, for prevention and for dental care. But that is exactly what the Abbott government has done in this budget. This is what this budget delivers to the Australian people—cuts to public hospitals, cuts to prevention programs, cuts to dental care, a GP tax and more expensive medicines. When the population is ageing and the rate of chronic illness is increasing, it is inconceivable that the government would want to make the changes that it does, particularly those putting a barrier in the way of people accessing general practitioners. Medicare has served Australia well for the past 30 years, but this government appears to want erode its very fabric—universal access.

When Bob Hawke as Prime Minister introduced Medicare all those decades ago, he warned that without it more than two million Australians faced potential financial ruin in the event of a major illness. Today that is not the case, because every Australian can rely on our universal health system, a universal insurance scheme that everybody contributes to according to their means, and that means that people can access health care on the basis of their need and not on the basis of their means to pay for it. If this Prime Minister gets his way he will be taking Australia back decades and putting millions of Australians in the same perilous position that was the case of pre-Medicare.

I want to take each of the cuts within this appropriation bill in turn, starting with public hospitals. The first we saw was the ripping up of Labor's historic agreements that were reached with the states and territories in health, agreements which had largely ended the blame game when it came to the Commonwealth and states, and which had started to wind back the erosion of the Commonwealth's contribution to public hospital funding that had occurred under the Liberals. In fact, the Abbott government's own election policy document, a document that was very scant on detail in any case, did promise that a coalition government would support the transition to the Commonwealth providing 50 per cent of growth funding of the efficient price of the hospital services as proposed. This was part of the coalition's election documentation.

What did we see after the election? Well, you will not find that promise on the coalition's website anymore. Amazingly, it has suddenly disappeared. So embarrassed is the coalition by this broken promise in health that it has taken its election policy off its website. And so ashamed is it of how badly it has broken this pre-election promise that, instead of providing the growth funding that was promised to the Australian public and promised to the states to run the public hospitals, this budget of broken promises cuts a whopping $50 billion from Australia's public hospitals. And it is no wonder that the Prime Minister is too embarrassed to meet with his state counterparts after this promise was so comprehensively broken. These are cuts that commence in just 35 days' time, on 1 July this year.

Only last fortnight, the Treasurer told Australians: the fact is we are honouring the four years of the agreements in both hospitals and schools that we said we would honour; we are doing that. That is simply untrue. The Treasurer does not even know what is in his own budget.

The cuts to hospitals start this financial year, and we know that that will put services at jeopardy. States are already talking about hospital bed closures. We know that there will be changes in emergency department waiting times, that there will be changes and blow-outs in elective surgery times, that there are hospital beds that will close and that nurses and doctors will not be employed or will be employed less. At every point in the system we see that this government plans to cut funding and to break its promises.

In preventative health, the government is to rip up the $367-million agreement on preventive health funding. States and territories that entered into contracts for programs that are to start shortly are suddenly now finding themselves with a shortfall. This is coming at the same time as many states across the country have started to withdraw funding for preventive health programs as well, saying that they believe it is the role of the Commonwealth to engage in prevention. We have now seen with this budget that the Commonwealth is largely abdicating the field when it comes to health prevention. The National Partnership Agreement on Preventative Health is gone. Preventative health funding for programs to tackle obesity, alcohol abuse and smoking have been cut. We know the government does not care about preventive health because it is also planning to cut some $2.9 million from the national tobacco campaign. It is also axing, in a separate bill, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency, the agency charged with making sure preventive health is a priority. It works with states and territories to ensure that we do not duplicate effort, that we have a combined partnership agreement in order to get the maximum benefit for our preventative health dollar and that as a country we are actually tackling conditions that are preventable like diabetes and heart disease. The government does not seem to believe in these things. It is ripping down the preventative health website and the health star rating system and shutting down organisations like the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council. And I suspect there is a whole lot more to come in health space. These are short-sighted policy decisions that will take Australia's health system back decades.

And of course then there are the government's plans to introduce the GP tax. The government wants to basically put a significant barrier, a pay wall, in the way of people accessing their GPs. So flawed is this policy, the Treasurer and Prime Minister do not actually understand how it works. Last week, during interviews, the Prime Minister and Treasurer both said to the Australian public that if you have chronic disease you will not pay this tax; it will not apply to you. It was a plainly wrong and incorrect statement. No-one is exempt from the government's GP tax. The facts the Treasurer relied upon to introduce this tax are also wrong. A fortnight ago, the Treasurer was out there again on ABC's Q&A saying that, on average, Australians visit the doctor 11 times a year. This is simply not true. In fact, Australia is bang-on the OECD average and the correct number is fewer than seven times.

This is a tax based on a broken promise that no health policy expert has said is a good idea. The Australian Medical Association has said this is a very bad idea and is very bad policy. They Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association, the Royal Australian College of Emergency Physicians, the Royal Australian College of GPs—not necessarily known for radical campaigning—have actually started a #CoPayNoWay campaign, a significant campaign that is seeing hundreds of emails arrive in my inbox each day absolutely opposed to this government trying to put a barrier in the way of people accessing a doctor.

The Consumer Health Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that is charged with representing consumers and advocating for consumers, has very clearly said this policy will impact very significantly on those with chronic conditions, those who are on low and middle incomes and on some of the most vulnerable Australians in the country. I went and visited an Aboriginal medical service just recently. The staff there told me that they cannot possibly charge this tax and that will mean that, for their service delivery, they will have to find an extra $350,000 each year just to continue to employ doctors to meet the demand they have within their service. It is a cost they will have to absorb within their own system. They are very concerned about what that will mean for services right the way across their community.

All of these bodies have advised this government against this policy yet the government has determined that they will proceed with it. Not only will they proceed with the GP tax but they are also intending to tell states and territories that they should also impose a tax when people go to emergency departments. We have seen only one state to date, Western Australia, say that they would entertain such a thing.

These are changes that the former vice president of the Australian Medical Association has said will take Australia's health system back more than 50 years. I think he knows something about it. He absolutely knows something about the health system which unfortunately this government appears not to. Not only will healthcare be less affordable and less accessible, the government is also ripping $270 million—

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