Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Paying the bills! I talked about this leaked Treasury advice. There was another nasty leak—apart from the 1.2 million homes—and that was that the budget is straining. The budget is struggling. It is in structural imbalance. What was Treasury's advice to the government? Raise taxes. And we know that when they run out of money, they come after yours, members of the Australian public. Now, if that's the case, again, this government has to be honest. They have to say: 'Yes; we have got Treasury advice that says our budget is out of balance. It's weak. It's falling over, and this is what we're going to do about it.' We haven't heard that. We've just heard failures to acknowledge this problem.

So what is the secret plan to raise taxes? You can bet your life on it—there's a secret plan coming forward. Maybe it's at the productivity roundtable which is desperately seeking an answer to the productivity question. Three years after being in government, they say: 'Quick, what do we do? We get people in a room, and we ask them. We don't seem to consult our own Treasury documents or listen to their advice!'

I talked about struggling families and mums, and I've spoken to many. Coming out of winter, you have three young children, they all have a respiratory infection, and you want to find medical treatment for them. Everyone knows this. Do you recall the Prime Minister during the campaign holding up his Medicare card, saying, 'This is all you need to get free hospital treatment when you go to the doctor.' How many times did he say that? So many times. In fact, I think a lot of Australians voted for this prime minister on the basis that they would get free treatment with that Medicare card.

I know, and my terrific colleagues here know, that there are people who are going in saying: 'I can't pay. I have children who need treatment, and I can't pay.' Maybe they will get pointed to a bulk-billing clinic. Apparently, 90 per cent of all appointments are going to be bulk billed. The Prime Minister was spruiking it today, the Minister for Health and Ageing too. Health minister, I think you're a decent person. I think you care when people don't get the treatment they need in their GP, and I think you understand why—the GP is the centre of your care, so you have to get that right at the very beginning of your health treatment.

But it's not good enough that mothers are saying they're not taking children to the doctor—except they're rushing to emergency in the middle of the night because their children can't breathe properly. The respiratory tract infection has taken hold, but they didn't have the money to take them to the doctor. This is real; this is serious. This is not good enough.

We don't want to hear these statistics waved in our face because we know that when we left government, bulk billing rates were about 88 per cent. When the government won the last election, they'd slipped to 77 per cent. All of these promises are not going to hide those statistics. Bulk-billing rates are falling off a cliff, and that means parents cannot afford to go to the doctor.

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