Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Health has just moved a suspension of standing orders to avoid answering questions that were put from this side of the House during consideration in detail. We are dealing with the first health bill of this parliament, and not only that: one of the questions was about the impact on Indigenous health. This government, with a Prime Minister who claims to be a Prime Minister for Indigenous Australia, has a Minister for Health who avoids answering a single question, put during consideration in detail, about the impact of these measures on Indigenous health. Under section 100, how much of the $1.3 billion is going back into listing new medicines on the PBS? How many scripts does the average pensioner fill? How many scripts does someone with a healthcare card, on average, fill? How much more will it cost per year for the average pensioner before they reach the safety net? How much more will it cost per year for the average healthcare card holder before they reach the safety net? What will the cost per script be by July 2018 for pensioners and healthcare card holders when the safety net is at 68? Can the government guarantee that the safety net will be capped at 68?

These are questions that the public has a right to have answers on. What is the impact of the bill on Indigenous Australians who access medications? These are questions that have been put during consideration in detail. But—something that I have not seen before in this place—during consideration in detail the relevant minister could not even be bothered to be in the chamber. We have had his one bill—the one health bill that has been before this parliament—and the Minister for Health cannot even be bothered to turn up for work.

We heard an allegation during question time today from the Minister for the Environment, who talks about energy. The Minister for the Environment—who does not talk about the environment—claimed that senators, because they were debating legislation, were on strike. Well, there is someone who is on strike at the moment, and it is the Minister for Health, who cannot be bothered to come into the parliament when his own bill is being debated. It is the Minister for Health who is in a government that is claiming that they care about Indigenous Australians and who refuses to answer questions about the impact of his own legislation on Indigenous Australians. I do not know what the reason is. I do not know whether the reason he will not answer those questions is that he does not know the answer. There is a fair chance that that is the case, because whenever he is asked questions in the parliament all he can do is throw political abuse across the chamber. Or, he does know the answer and does not want the rest of Australia to know the answer, does not want the rest of Australia to know what the impact of this bill will be.

Only six coalition MPs could be bothered to come into this parliament to speak on the bill. And this is in a situation where one of the commitments that was made by their Prime Minister, right up to the day before the election, was that there would be no cuts to health. Yet now, after being told there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to pensions, no cuts to the ABC and SBS and no increases in taxes, we come into this chamber and find precisely that they are cutting into the health system and doing so in a way whereby we have a Minister for Health who refuses to be accountable. We know on this side of the parliament that when you come to the end of the debate on these bills the government, obviously, in the House of Representatives, ends up with a majority. But we expect that they can be brave enough to defend their policies and that they can have a minister who is willing to answer the most basic questions.

Consideration in detail does not go for a long time. There is no provision that requires the Minister for Health to sit here throughout the whole of the second reading debate. But to have a situation in which his one piece of legislation is such that he cannot be bothered to have even a staff member here taking notes for him and telling him what the questions are—

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