Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

In this budget we have recognised the fact that we just cannot sustain giving away for free all these services that Labor proposes—that somehow you can put that on the credit card and that it is sustainable going forward. That is the problem that Labor has.

I want to start by acknowledging the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We spend about $9 billion a year in this country on a great medicine scheme. I want to say thank you to the Labor Party for their support of a co-payment in the PBS in the 1960s. And I want to say thank you very much to the Labor Party for their support of a co-payment during the 1970s, when we saw an increase in the number of people that accessed the PBS and paid a co-payment. I want to thank the Labor Party for supporting a co-payment during the 1980s. I want to recognise that, in 1986, the Labor Party increased the PBS co-payment by 100 per cent, from $5 to $10, for general patients. I want to thank the Labor Party for supporting a co-payment in relation to the PBS in the nineties. In fact, it was the Labor Party, in 1991, that said that they wanted to keep the PBS sustainable and a co-payment was necessary. And it was the Labor Party, in 1991, that first introduced a co-payment for pensioners—not worried about those without means, not worried about those people who are most sick.

Labor's argument for 50 years has been that a co-payment is necessary to make the PBS sustainable. During all of that period, they have said the co-payment is a sensible policy. Now why would they oppose a co-payment to make Medicare sustainable? Because they are playing politics. For 50 years the Labor Party have supported a co-payment principle, and yet in the last 24 hours the shadow minister for health has referred to a co-payment on the PBS as a tax—a tax that they presided over for 50 years. If anybody ever needed any evidence of their hypocrisy and of the Labor Party playing politics, look no further than her comments of the last 24 hours. I saw the shadow minister's performance on Q&A last night. I have got to say it takes a special talent—

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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