Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I hear laughter at that. It was an understatement; that is true. He overstates the effect of the PBS co-payment because he ignores the compensation that was given. He also ignores the context and the rationale for it.

This is a bad law, basically. It is a health amendment. One would expect that a health amendment from any government would actually be about improving access to health services; this one does not do that. In fact, it increases the cost of pharmaceuticals. It does not compensate the low paid for the increased cost. It will, over time, probably lead to an increase in health costs.

I would like to finish by repeating once again the basic principle that should underpin any health policy, which is that the ultimate way to save on health costs for the taxpayer is to make sure that our population remains as healthy as possible. The best way to do that is to increase support and effort at the early stages of an illness or in keeping people healthy in the first place. Policies such as this one and the GP tax that discourage people from taking those early steps of seeing a doctor and taking early action should be avoided at all costs because not only are they bad for patients but they are inevitably more expensive in the long run for the taxpayer. I reject this bill absolutely. It flies in the face of all logic.

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