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

This is a very important issue. People who are listening to this broadcast would be thinking: 'Why is the government saying that funding for public hospitals is increasing by nine per cent each year over the course of the next three years and six per cent in year 4, yet we have just heard the shadow minister claim that money is being cut from public hospitals?' I will explain it in this way: imagine a person going to work on an income of $1,000 a week. His boss says, 'I'm going to give you pay rise. Your pay will go from $1,000 to $1,200 a week.' The bloke goes home that night and says to his family: 'You wouldn't believe it. I was expecting $1,300 a week and my pay has been cut by $100 a week.' It just does not hold any water. The fact is that we are increasing hospital funding by nine per cent year-on-year over the course of the next three years and by six per cent in year 4. Yes, the states and territories would want more than nine per cent, no question. That is understandable. But the reality is that this government was left with enormous debt by the previous Labor government. People realise that in their own budgets—in their own household budgets and their own small business budgets—you cannot afford to borrow money to pay the interest bill. You cannot afford to do that in your own household finances and you certainly cannot afford to do it at the Commonwealth level.

We have seen in New South Wales, where the health system was a disaster, that more money did not mean better outcomes. The O'Farrell government—now the Baird government—was elected to clean up Labor's mess in health. In New South Wales Labor put more money into health bureaucracies. Why? Because that is what the unions demand. Unions demand that more people go from the wards into academic positions, into positions that are non-frontline, and that new health bureaucracies be created. It is exactly the same picture that took place in Queensland, where we saw the Dr Patel disaster and the payroll debacle. We saw people spending years and years on waiting lists. It was not because Labor at a state level had cut money out of the public hospital system; indeed, they put more money in. They got worse outcomes because they had taken the money that used to be used for frontline services and put it into bureaucratic positions. It would be no surprise to anybody in this country that, over the course of the last six years, under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period of dysfunctional government Labor applied exactly the same formula. There were the Australian National Preventive Health Agency and Health Workforce Australia. Believe it or not, in addition to my department, the Department of Health, there were 23 outside agencies.

If you are taking money from the frontline services, from the doctors and nurses and hospital wards and from GP services around the country, and putting it into that ever-growing bureaucracy, no wonder you would have worse health outcomes. This has been Labor's formula, tried and failed at the state level and applied at the federal level over the course of the last six years. We were elected, as were the O'Farrell and the Newman governments, to clean-up Labor's mess; and clean it up we will.

In this budget we say that some states have overstated, for argument's sake, the amount of activity that has been taking place in their hospitals. We say to the states, 'Under the crazy Julia Gillard agreement that you signed, you were guaranteed funding in your hospitals even if you didn't perform the surgery.' We will continue to honour the agreement and fund the additional surgery that takes place within hospitals, but, you would not believe it, we are insisting that the surgery actually takes place. I do not think that is a foreign concept to anybody in this place, let alone to the Australian taxpayer, who funds all of these services. We are saying that we will provide the additional funding if you do the surgery. If you see the people in emergency departments, if you perform the surgery for not just hearts and hips but knees and all the rest of the elective surgery that takes place, we will provide that additional funding. I think that is a completely reasonable arrangement.

One of the lies that Labor push is that, somehow, money has been cut from this budget, because we did not continue the so-called national partnership agreements. Let me give members one example. Then-Prime Minister Gillard entered into a subacute national partnership agreement with the states and territories, which commenced on 1 July 2011. There was a defined amount of money that went to the states and territories to help them build some beds in public hospitals. Nobody argued against that. The funding was due to finish on 30 June this year, and it will finish. In the run-up to the election the Labor Party issued their policy document and, through their discredited economic spokesperson, they put out their numbers, which did not have one extra dollar from 1 July this year under that time limited partnership agreement.

When we put out our policy, we also said, 'We accept that that partnership agreement expires on 30 June this year, and we won't provide funding beyond that.' Labor and the Liberals went into the election with exactly the same policy. Somehow the Labor Party now says, 'The Liberal Party are cutting this NPA. They are not providing funding going forward.' It is a complete fallacy, and it is at complete odds with the truth of the Labor Party's position.

That is not where it stops, unfortunately. The former government had lots of problems. They spent money, racked up debt and wasted money. The shadow minister before referred to a series called The Hollowmen. Many people in this place and listening to this broadcast would have seen The Hollowmen series. You know what? It was based on the Rudd government years. It was based on the failed Rudd period of government. Kevin Rudd said—as Bob Hawke said in 1991—that Medicare is unsustainable without a co-payment. The Labor Party supported a co-payment in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and right up until 24 hours ago when the Labor Party all of a sudden referred to a PBS co-payment as a PBS tax. Why did they do that? Having said for 50-odd years that we needed a co-payment to keep our medicine scheme sustainable, why are they calling it a tax now? It is simply politics.

What we are endeavouring to do today is put the facts on the table in a rational way for people to make a decision for themselves. The Labor Party claims that there is somehow a cut in hospital funding, and yet the budget papers demonstrate that we will increase hospital funding nine per cent this year, next year and the year after and by six per cent in year four. We do not want to tear Medicare down; we want to build it up. We are saying in relation to Medicare that in a country of 23 million people with an ageing population we cannot pretend that 263 million services for free each year is sustainable. It is not. Bob Hawke said in 1991, 'We need a co-payment for the PBS because we want to make our drug system sustainable.' He said, 'We need a co-payment for the Medicare system because we want to keep the health system sustainable.' Andrew Leigh, the shadow Assistant Treasurer, has written at length about this very issue and has said that Medicare is unsustainable without a co-payment. We know the member for Jagajaga, a senior frontbencher within the Labor Party, as the policy head of the health section within the Labor Party at the time advised that Brian Howe should introduce a co-payment. And Brian Howe did introduce a co-payment. He introduced a co-payment as Bob Hawke's health minister and as Deputy Prime Minister because he recognised then as we do now—and as Kevin Rudd did in 2007—that if we do not make Medicare sustainable it will collapse.

We are saying that, for people who can afford to pay a $7 co-payment, $5 of that will go towards a $20 billion medical research fund to address the fact that 7,500 Australians a week by 2050 will be diagnosed with dementia. I want to make sure that we can put more money into research to address the issues of an ageing population—such as diseases of the brain, cardiac disease and rare forms of cancer. I want to make sure that we can provide additional support to our medical researchers, and so $5 is going into that fund. The other $2 of the $7 will go to supplementing the money that doctors receive now under Medicare. That means that we can continue to bulk-bill those people who cannot afford the $7 and ensure the universality of Medicare.

The Labor Party at the moment believe you can rack up debt after debt on the country's credit card and that somehow that is sustainable. Nobody else believes that. This government was elected to clean up Labor's mess. As I said before, we will clean it up, and not just the boats, the economy and the budget. We will also make our health system sustainable. Australians know in their hearts and minds it is only the Liberal Party that can do that.

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