David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Really, Mr Speaker, they have a hide to talk about us and cuts to Medicare. I think they pulled this out of the bottom drawer. It was a quiet day today. All the other issues of the day don't seem to be cutting the mustard anymore, so they think, 'We'll wheel out Medicare cuts.' You just have to look at the record of the other side, the Labor Party, when they were last in government. There were cuts everywhere. If Medicare and the health system were a patient, they'd still be bleeding in the recovery ward. There were cuts everywhere—death by a thousand cuts.

Look at the dental issue under the former Labor government. They got rid of the chronic dental disease program. That's a billion dollars in itself. In pathology, they cut another $500 million. Medicare payments to GPs were cut by over $600 million. There was the freeze. Who introduced the freeze? It was the Labor Party. If you look at what they cut out of pharmacy, Mr Speaker—it's unbelievable, the chutzpah of the people on the other side who talk about cuts—it was $2.5 billion out of pharmaceutical benefits, let alone blocking Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommendations in cabinet to save money. Then there was the major haemorrhage to private health insurance, which gives so many people access to hospital care because they're on waiting lists for public hospitals; it gives them control over their health.

So, I am certain that, if we put these people back in charge of the health system, they would be back to saying one thing but then delivering another. We in the coalition government have a wonderful record in the Health portfolio. We have supported the four pillars of the health system. With the Medicare benefits schedule, we have started unfreezing the Medicare freeze with a bulk-billing incentive first, then GP rates, then speciality rates and then radiology and diagnostic things down the track. We have put extra money into the pharmaceutical benefits by getting a better, cheaper deal out of the big pharmaceutical providers for the old, cheaper drugs—we got a better deal for them—and we're putting it in the front end so we can get all the wonderful new drugs. You've only got to look at what we have on record: 1,400 new drugs, including all the wonderful drugs for hepatitis C. That is 200,000 people who can now be cured rather than getting cirrhosis and cancers. Look at cancers for kidney, ovary, lung—you name it—renal cancers, the latest announcement of a new drug for chronic lymphatic leukaemia, a common blood malignancy. They all have to be paid for. They're very expensive and we on the coalition side have managed things and got a good deal and have an ongoing funding stream for pharmaceutical benefits and the new drugs that everyone clamours for.

Heart failure—there's another one: hundreds of thousands of people suffer from it, and Entresto is now on the PBS. They talk about cuts to public hospitals. Really, it is just a joke. They say one thing. They're trading off their record from Gough Whitlam's days. They talk up their book, but really what they did in the last government was really disappointing. Public hospitals since 2013 have 64 per cent more funding from the Liberal-Nationals coalition governments. That's another $2.8 billion just in the 2017-18 year, or $7.7 billion since 2016. That's a massive increase: 64½ per cent. And the list goes on.

So we're defrosting the Medicare freeze in a stage fashion. That is how people manage things well. We have the runs on the board. We are delivering in spades for health. It's well managed. We have extra money in childhood cancer treatment. We have extra money for mental health. The huge burden of mental health hasn't been addressed as well as it has with the recent appointment of the member for Flinders as health minister. He realises that the mental health burden in Australia is huge, and we are directing appropriate funds to address that. (Time expired)

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