Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking on this MPI on the government's broken promises and failures in rural and regional health, because there are so many broken promises. It has been interesting listening to the contributions from the other side. I do not recall any of them talking about the GP tax. All of those speakers from the Minister for Health to all the backbenches. I particularly note the member for Lyne not once in his contribution mentioned the $7 doctor tax. I wonder what the good people of Lyne—the people who are severely impacted by his support for such an unfair, cruel and unjust tax—think of that. It is fascinating. None of them were prepared to defend any of their harsh and cruel actions. We will certainly outline some of them. You have heard some of the harsh actions outlined today by the speakers on our side.

The fact is this government has a trail of broken promises across a huge range of areas, and for regional areas those cuts to health are some of the very cruellest. The fact is that the Liberal-National Party is continuing to punish people in regional and rural Australia. In fact, it is the Nationals who are responsible for these cruel cuts to health. Indeed, the cruellest cut is probably the $7 doctor tax, which makes it so much harder for people in country areas to actually access health services. It is one of their many, many broken promises.

The fact is that in rural and regional Australia out-of-pocket health costs are higher, and they will only increase with this government's unfair policies. Indeed, another broken promise was about Medicare locals. We have spoken about that today as well. This will have a huge impact on regional areas because Medicare locals have been very effective particularly at coordinating a lot of different services in rural areas that did not have that before. They have been able to provide great services where there were gaps before. Of course it is another broken promise. I refer to this wonderful book about the Abbott government's broken election promises—there are so many. This book refers specifically to health, but there are many listed. We return to 28 August 2013, when the Prime Minister—the then Leader of the Opposition—said, 'We're not shutting any Medicare locals.' What happened? They broke that promise. All 61 Medicare locals will be axed. This is devastating for regional areas. Not many from the city electorates over there would understand, and we know the regional ones do not care. Medicare locals actually do an incredibly important job in our rural areas, so we certainly need to have them in place.

As we have heard other speakers say today, people living in rural and regional areas have some of the very poorest health outcomes. Incomes are low, and we know that chronic disease rates are much higher. There is also a higher proportion of Indigenous population with poorer health conditions. Access to health is more expensive, and there are also far greater distances in regional areas. That is why other broken promises like the petrol tax are devastating; people have to travel further in regional areas. So that is another broken promise that impacts people.

As I have said, people in regional areas have poorer health outcomes. Despite all of this, the Abbott government's first budget really declared war on Medicare. It really was horrendous. Introducing the doctor tax for all patients will cost over $1.4 billion to communities living outside metropolitan centres, and those rural and regional patients will be charged over and over again when they see the doctor, when they fill their prescriptions and when they get scans, X-rays and blood tests as well. That, on top of the increases to PBS medicines, will just mean that people from these regional areas will not access healthcare services. That is what your government has done. People from these areas just will not do it. That is what they are telling us. They simply cannot afford it.

But let's compare all of that—all that devastation, all of that harm, all of those hurtful policies—to what Labor did when we were in government and the great changes we made.

We have a very proud record when it comes to health reform. Firstly, we are the party that introduced Medicare 30 years go—and we are very proud to be defending it today. We also made great advances, when we were in government, getting GPs to rural and regional areas, and increasing bulk-billing rates to the highest level in history. That is a great achievement. Labor lifted the bulk-billing rates to over 82 per cent, on average.

When the now Prime Minister was health minister they were as low as 67 per cent. That is pretty low. We also heard some great achievements—like the GP superclinic in my electorate, which is fantastic. It was funded, built and delivered by Labor, and it provides a great variety of allied health services. So we will always fight to ensure that there are great health services in our regional areas. But the biggest attack on future health and hospital services in rural and regional areas comes from the National Party. It comes from the National Party because they are out there with cruel policies like the doctor tax. They are pursuing the funding cuts in hospitals and they are devastating regional areas. (Time expired)

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