Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

It was only four days ago that I received an email from a local doctor in my area which said:

It appears that they—

'they' being the Turnbull government—

haven't learned anything from their narrow victory.

He was talking about the cuts to Medicare and to health generally. That was his summation only four days ago. It was Labor that built Medicare, and it will always be Labor that will fight to protect it. It is because of Labor and because of Medicare that we have one of the best health systems in the world. Despite the Prime Minister's hysteric denials that this government and this Prime Minister are intent on dismantling Medicare, Australia's universal healthcare system, we know that they are simply following in the tracks of every other coalition government before them.

If you want to know what this government is doing, Mr Deputy Speaker, just look at the facts. This is the government that cut $50 billion of funding to hospitals. It made three attempts to increase a GP co-payment: first it was $7, then it was $5, then it was $20. When it could not do that, it froze the GP Medicare payments for six years, knowing that doctors would have no alternative but to charge a GP co-payment, possibly up to $20. This is the government that wants to cut $650 million from pathology and diagnostic imaging incentive bulk-billing payments. This is the government that wants to cut around $1 billion from the Child Dental Benefit Scheme. It is the government that wants to increase pharmaceutical costs by some $5 on top of the $37 that many people already pay.

Members opposite—including the Minister for Health and Aged Care only today—cry foul over Labor's Medicare campaign. The facts speak for themselves and they are very clear: when the government cuts public funding of government services and transfers that responsibility to the free market, that is privatisation, clear and simple, and that is exactly what this government is doing.

Of course, we also know that this is the government that set up a Medicare privatisation taskforce. You do not do that unless you have intentions of privatising services currently being delivered by Medicare. It is a government that also paid $5 million to PricewaterhouseCoopers and tasked the Productivity Commission to advise the government on how to privatise essential services, including Medicare. So when members opposite cry foul, perhaps they should turn around to their own government and their own ministers and ask them: what are you really doing and why won't you come clean about what your intentions are here?

The reality is—and the research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows—that people in rural and remote communities generally experience poorer health, higher rates of most chronic diseases and shorter lives than people from metropolitan areas. That is because they are generally more disadvantaged, have poorer access to health services and have to travel greater distances to access those services. The incidence of chronic disease, cancer, injuries, mental health issues, dental health issues and obesity are all much higher in regional and remote parts of Australia than they are in metropolitan areas. Yet, under this government, what we have seen from the latest statistics is that the GP numbers in those areas are actually declining—that is, we have fewer GPs per 100,000 people in rural and remote areas than we had previously. The government's health policy is simply not working, and it is particularly failing people in regional and remote Australia.

Members opposite might try to deny the reality, but again I go back to the local GP services in my area, who claim that they had to cut the after-hours services to people in the local area because of the cuts to the practice incentive payments that they were receiving. I note that the cost of after-hours GP locum services has gone up from $90 million five years ago to $195 million in the last year. Those are costs that are blowing out because of the misguided policies of this government, who would do far better, as previous speakers on this side have already pointed out, by spending the money wisely and properly. It will actually save them money in the long term.

The last comment I want to make is about the Health Care Homes trials. Again, this is a program we would generally support, but it is not going to work if you do not give the doctors more funds, and instead do the opposite and freeze their Medicare payments.

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