Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

It's a little hard to follow after that given the outrage on this side of the House, but I shall attempt to do this subject justice because justice it deserves. This government has been cutting hundreds of millions of dollars out of our public hospital system, hundreds of millions of dollars out of your public hospital system. That is what this government has been doing. The latest budget, in fact, actually cuts a further billion dollars out of our healthcare system. It does so by a few means. This government can't seem to help itself when it comes to healthcare.

Cuts in this new budget include: $416 million to GP visas; $336 million on increased use of generic and biosimilar medicines; and $190 million from the MBS review. Taken in isolation, some of these savings measures may not necessarily be a bad thing. For example, Labor offered bipartisan support for the MBS review. But some of these savings, frankly, don't stack up.

More than two weeks after the budget, we are still waiting for the government to explain the claimed savings from the GP visa changes, but the minister has been silent on this issue. AMA president, Michael Gannon, argued these savings won't be realised because patients will move to other GPs. If that's true, the government has a half-a-billion-dollar back hole when it comes to its budget. The only other alternative is that these savings will be realised because people are not accessing Medicare services—that's a cut to Medicare. The government should come out of hiding on this and actually explain this measure and say which it is. You have either got a hole in your budget, or people—particularly in country areas that have been relying on overseas-trained doctors to access services—are actually going to have less access to Medicare services. You can't have it both ways.

Whatever the case, there is a broader question here—namely, where is the $1 billion actually going to?

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