Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps I did miss this during the last election campaign and perhaps the coalition was upfront about its plans to jack up the prices of prescription medicines and to undermine our universal healthcare system. However, I suspect that a more likely explanation is that this bill before us is another example from a litany of broken promises from this government since the May budget.

Labor will oppose the $1.3 billion tax increase on medicine imposed by this bill, because it will hurt every Australian. It is unfair and is another broken promise. There are many reasons for opposing this bill but the one that strikes me the most is the impact of increasing the cost of prescriptions will have on the use of prescription medicines in the community. The COAG Reform Council report, released in early June, found that at present 8.5 per cent of people in 2012-13 delayed or did not fill their prescription due to its cost. In disadvantaged areas like Melbourne's west that I represent, the figure was 12.4 per cent and for Indigenous people it was an extraordinary 36.4 per cent. If this bill does manage to pass, we can expect that these rates to increase even more. Call me a revolutionary, but I believe that people respond to price incentives. This may be foreign to the coalition government, which does not want a price signal or incentive for polluters, though a price signal for sick Australians does seem to attract the support of the Prime Minister.

It is important when we are talking about the PBS that we understand they are not just medications for the common cold. Drugs under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are required to help people to live a functional life. The last time a coalition government increased the tax on medicines in 2005, the number of prescriptions for some 'essential' medicines fell by as much as 11 per cent. These medications were prescribed by GPs as necessary for their patients' lives but were foregone because of their cost. We on this side of the House will do everything we can to ensure that this does not happen again. That is why we are opposing this bill in the House.

If this bill was really about the sustainability of the healthcare system, the revenue raised from these increases in the prices of prescription medicines would be returned into the PBS or into Medicare or into the Australian healthcare system. So far, however, the government has shown no interest in improving the lives of Australians experienced through the healthcare system. In fact, these changes are part of an ideological campaign to get rid of Australia's universal healthcare scheme and create a two-tiered user-pays system. As the member for Griffith indicated earlier, this is part of a concerted policy from the government to Americanise our healthcare system, in the same way that they are trying to Americanise our higher-education system and in the same way that, if they got their druthers, they would try to Americanise our industrial relations system. The vision for this country held by those opposite is very different to the one held on this side of the House. We believe in a fair go. We believe in a compact between the voters and the government that we will live in a civilised society, not a dog-eat-dog user-pays system.

Australia's universal healthcare system means a lot to my constituents in Gellibrand, and it is part of this fair go. We believe in this compact that we will live in a civilised society where everyone has access to affordable, high-quality health care, regardless of their means. This is why we will not be supporting this government's unfair slug on sick Australians that has been built on the fibs, falsehoods, fictions and fabrications told by those opposite before the last election. Must we remind those opposite, yet again, of the promises the Prime Minister made before the last election: 'no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, no change to the GST, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS'—and, a personal favourite of mine, 'What you'll get under us are tax cuts, with no new taxes'? In fact, the Prime Minister went so far as to say, on the Today program, that reducing taxes was his 'very reason for being in politics'. Yet I have lost count of the number of bills since the May budget that I have spoken on in this chamber in which this government is increasing the cost to Australians—increasing taxes.

At the same time that the government is increasing taxes it is cutting funding to education, cutting funding to health, changing the pension, goading the states into calling for an increase in the GST, cutting funding for the public broadcaster and introducing a new $7 tax every time you go to the GP and is now trying to push through this increase in the price of prescription medications. Where is the Prime Minister's respect for the Australian people? How can the Australian people ever trust this Prime Minister again, when he has broken so many promises in such a short period of time?

But you need not take the word of those of us on this side of the House about the impacts this bill will have on Australians. All you need to do is listen to the experts. Australia's most senior health experts have already warned that this government's budget will put Australia's healthcare system back more than 50 years. Philip Clarke, Professor of Public Health at the University of Melbourne, recently wrote:

Clearly, it is consumers, particularly those with chronic diseases, … that will feel the pain from these budget measures.

We on this side of the House are listening to experts like Mr Clarke, and after listening to his analysis and many others in the sector we cannot support a bill as unfair as the one currently before us.

The proposed price increases in this bill come off the back of cuts already made by this government to the healthcare sector—cuts they promised before the last election that they would not be making. So far the government has conceded that it will slash $1.8 billion from Australia's public hospitals, including public hospitals in my electorate and, as part of the Western Health network, Williamstown Hospital, Sunshine Hospital and Western hospital in Footscray, and will introduce a new $7 tax on doctor visits—a $7 tax that you can be sure will become $15 in short order, as recommended by the Commission of Audit, the ideological priesthood of this coalition government. We have seen already from those opposite proposed cuts of hundreds of millions of dollars to preventive health, dental health and Australia's health workforce. It is extraordinary, as the member for Gellibrand coming into this House, seeing that those opposite do not support preventive health in our community. My predecessor in this seat championed many worthy preventive health initiatives and I can only speculate as to why those opposite are so hostile to preventive health. It may be that the Institute of Public Affairs' list of items for the government to get out of the way, once it was elected, to be more radical than Whitlam, had seven items relating to the repeal of preventive health measures. Why is the IPA hostile to preventive health measures? Why would the IPA not want us doing something about tobacco? Why would the IPA not want us doing something about big alcohol, about big food? I leave that question in the ether, but because the IPA does not disclose its funding sources we could not infer that these positions were taken as a result of their political donors. So I do not make that inference here today, but if they did disclose it then maybe we would have an explanation for this mystery.

It is important to recognise here that the PBS works differently from the MBS. High-income earners pay a Medicare levy surcharge to support the MBS. This is not the case for the PBS. Labor does not support this, especially in the context of the other draconian measures this government has proposed as part of its budget of broken promises—in particular, the taxes it wants to increase and introduce for doctor visits, pathology and medical imaging.

The government has tried to point the finger at Labor in this debate and claim that we too made changes to the PBS. The point, however, is that the changes made by Labor in government would have put the PBS on a sustainable footing—reinvesting in the scheme to improve accessibility to a wider range of medicines. The changes in this bill are an unnecessary slug on Australians, who already have very high out-of-pocket costs. The government is desperately trying to find new sources of revenue without thinking about the effects such changes will have on people in the community, particularly the vulnerable. If the government was actually trying to put the PBS on a sustainable path, it would be reinvesting the money raised by these increase back into the scheme. However, it is not. Instead, the government is putting money into the Medical Research Future Fund. The minister has refused to guarantee that this fund will not see the government shirking its responsibilities to continue funding medical research in the future through the National Health and Medical Research Council, should it be re-elected. It is an extraordinary proposition: to tax today's sick in order to search for a cure for tomorrow's ill.

The PBS is currently operating on a sustainable basis. In fact, the PBS is growing at a much slower rate than expected, and recent budget updates have shown that the PBS is growing at a slower rate than it was expected to. This has not happened accidentally; it has come about because of a number of measures Labor took in government, measures that where opposed and campaigned against by the Prime Minister and those opposite. Labor's work, including the price disclosure reforms, made the PBS sustainable without punishing patients.

The current bill before the House punishes patients beyond belief. At the moment, the government spends around $9 billion per year on the PBS. Accelerated price disclosure has slowed the real rate of PBS growth and put the PBS on the necessary maintainable long-term footing. In Labor's last budget, there were changes that were expected to deliver more than $1.8 billion in savings. Over the years from 2007 to 2017-18, the savings were close to $20 billion. These are savings that the government should be using to ensure that the new drugs of the future, or lifesaving drugs, are listed as quickly as possible once they have been recommended by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Council. But that is not what we are seeing from this government. Consistent with its approach to governing so far, especially when it comes to health, this government is saying, 'You pay or you go without.'

At present, the PBS safety net threshold for general patients is $1,421. Once the PBS safety net is reached, general patients only pay $6 for each prescription. For concessional patients, the PBS safety net is $360 and concessional patients pay no additional out-of pocket costs for medicines once the safety net is reached. PBS safety net family arrangements also apply, whereby a family can combine PBS amounts, which can mean that at present families meet the safety net sooner. For PBS safety net purposes, a family comprises a couple legally married and not separated, with or without dependent children; a couple in a de facto relationship, with or without dependent children; or a single person with dependent children.

This bill proposes to increase the PBS safety net, on 1 January each year from 2015 to 2018, by 10 per cent plus an amount based on annual CPI indexation. From 1 January 2019, the government states that only CPI indexation will apply, but it is fair to be sceptical of the government's promise here given that it has broken every promise it has made when it comes to health care so far. In addition to increasing the PBS safety net for general patients, this bill proposes to increase the PBS safety net for concessional patients. This bill proposes to increase the concessional PBS safety net by two prescriptions each year from 1 January 2015 to 2018. Not only will medicines become more expensive, but for the most vulnerable—because that is what the safety net is there for, to protect Australians who are in a very vulnerable situation—the safety net to help them is further and further away.

In my electorate of Gellibrand, I recently visited the Williamstown emergency relief centre. After speaking to a number of people on the day, one thing became abundantly clear: many people in our community are already struggling to keep their head above water. With the cost of living continuing to rise, the current cost of medication is something many of these people already struggle with. Slugging them with a tax on their medicines will only make their lives even harder. They do not need that added cost, especially when many of those medicines are for life-saving purposes. It is the government's duty to help people like those who rely on the relief centre in Williamstown. We should be supporting them, not punishing them.

To conclude, I think it is important to highlight the objective set out in the National Medicines Policy, which the PBS comes under. The National Medicines Policy aims to achieve positive health outcomes for all Australians through access to and wise use of medicines. It is difficult to see how the bill before the House conforms with these objectives. This bill is, at the highest level, yet another example of how the coalition is attempting to change our country, attempting to turn our country into a dog-eat-dog society where the basic, fundamental tenets of the fair go that we have relied on over the last 40 years are thrown out the window. It is unsurprising those opposite did not bring the Australian people in on this plan before the last election. It is quite clear that, in my electorate, people did not vote for these changes—and they do not want them. I assure all those in this House that Labor will fight these changes both here and in the other place.

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