Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I respect the member for Macquarie. She left the best till last in her speech on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. And she's so right. People will come to members of parliament to say that the most important thing in their lives is their health. Make no mistake; you can have all the wealth in the world, but, if you don't have your health, you've really got nothing. Absolutely. But I really do take umbrage at the fact that Labor member after Labor member comes into the House and talks down what the coalition did during our nine years in government.

I am glad that the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health and Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention is in the chamber. I want to give her a couple of compliments. She came to Wagga Wagga recently to talk about mental health, and I appreciated the visit. I know that she understands as well as anybody in this place the issues of mental health, and I appreciate the fact that she is endeavouring to do something to help in this very important—very, very important—area. When funding was withdrawn from a town in my electorate, Gundagai, I called her, and she fixed the situation. She did it promptly, and she responded as a good minister should. That's all for compliments—although she should be the health minister, quite frankly. I don't want to put the kiss of death on her, but, quite frankly, she should be the health minister, because the health minister, the member for Hindmarsh, unfortunately doesn't respond to members of parliament when they write letters. We get letters back from his chief of staff. Seriously, that shouldn't happen. I shouldn't know the name of the chief of staff of the health minister straight off the top—I'm not going to mention his name, because I don't think it's right that we talk about staff members in the House and put it on the Hansard. But I shouldn't be getting letters back from the chief of staff; I should be getting them back from the minister. I really should. I don't think the assistant minister would do that. I can ring her, I can write letters to her, and I will get the response. I mightn't always like it, but at least I get it, and that's the way it ought to be.

It also disturbs me greatly that the Prime Minister is around and he holds this thing up—it's called the Medicare card—and says that's all you need. 'That is all you need.' He has said it over and over again, repeatedly. But we all remember, prior to the 2022 election, when he said over and over and over again, repeatedly, that there was going to be a lowering of your—when I say 'your', I'm talking about people out there in voter land—energy bills. That $275 never ever occurred. Just for once, I'd like to see the Prime Minister or the health minister admit that that isn't all you need when you go to see a medical specialist or when you go to see a health professional. It's certainly not the case if you live in rural and regional, let alone remote, Australia. You need to also take this little thing—it's your credit card.

What really irked me, what really got under my skin, was that, not that long ago, when there was a chorus of complaints about bulk-billing—bulk-billing rates dropped 11 per cent under the Labor government's first term—the health minister said, 'If you pick the phone up and you can't get bulk-billing from one doctor, just pick the phone up and make an appointment with another doctor in town.' It might all be well and good in the leafy suburbs of Adelaide. It might all be well and good in metropolitan Australia. Try getting another doctor—try getting any other doctor—in rural, regional and, particularly, remote Australia. I know the assistant minister would appreciate this, because it's impossible. Or, if you can get an appointment with another doctor—and the second doctor may well bulk-bill—it'll be quite a while. You might die waiting. I'm not exaggerating and I'm not making light of it; I'm being deadly serious. Often in regional Australia, when in pain, unfortunately, catch a plane, because there just aren't the health professionals.

We saw how the Minister for Health and Ageing disrespected our pharmacists. I know the assistant minister is a pharmacist. I know that's her trade. But the government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to sign the pharmacy accord when it should have been a fait accompli. It should have been a negotiation in good faith with our friendly chemists. It should have been agreed to with what was needed, and signed by the president of the Pharmacy Guild, Trent Twomey—who's a good man, who wasn't asking for much—and what did we see? We saw this absolute opposition from the government to what the Pharmacy Guild wanted. Then we saw the spectacle of the pharmacists coming in in their white coats, and they were disparaged because they were wearing what they wear to work. Yes, they were in white coats. They turned up en masse, and that's what it took. And it took, of course, the Nationals, and the Liberals too, fighting the good fight for it on behalf of our chemists because we on this side of the chamber know that in many communities—hundreds, in fact—in rural Australia the only health professional in town is your friendly pharmacist. That is the truth.

When it comes to policy, I heard the member for Macquarie talking about the days of the coalition government as if they were the Dark Ages—the bad old days when nothing was achieved in health. It was quite the opposite. You only have to look at the delivery under the coalition government. I'm very proud of and very pleased about the rural medical schools that we put in place. Indeed, we rolled those out in Bendigo, Dubbo, Mildura, Orange, Shepparton and my home town of Wagga Wagga, and in each of those facilities they are training dozens upon dozens of young hopefuls who will be the doctors of the future and will address the shortage of doctors in regional Australia.

That shortage has not been helped by Labor changing the distribution priority areas as soon as it got into government. They changed the DPAs and they made it such that periurban centres and coastal areas that are not in regional Australia but are in high-density areas could claim the distribution priority area funding. What happened then—and don't just take my word for it; the Rural Doctors Association and other key stakeholders said this—was that some doctors took their shingle off the practice and headed to the Gold Coast, headed to the city areas, headed to Wollongong or headed to Newcastle because all of a sudden they became eligible for the DPA funding.

This is not right, and it's particularly not right when you've got communities in rural areas that are reliant on the Royal Flying Doctor Service but also, as I described before, don't have a doctor. They don't have a doctor, let alone a bulk-billing doctor. They just don't have a doctor at all. I know the assistant minister is trying to do her best, and I commend her for it, but it's just not understood by the government. They've spurned regional Australia in so many areas but particularly in health—particularly when it comes to the wellbeing and health of those people who do not live in the bright city lights of a capital city. It's not right.

We have members coming into this place, and they've got their talking points. They read them out like robots and they make out as if nothing happened on the coalition's watch. Quite the opposite is the case, because we had this thing called COVID-19, and it was lucky that there was a coalition government in office when that occurred. It wasn't lucky at all that it occurred, but it was lucky we had a coalition government that put every measure and every possible policy in place to protect Australians and keep Australians alive. The Johns Hopkins centre acknowledged the fact that we were the second best in the world for pandemic preparedness. As the former deputy prime minister, I'm very proud of that, because we not only saved peoples' jobs but, more importantly, saved people's lives. We got those vaccines out. I have to say I was so proud of the fact that, when the vaccines were the hottest item that people were scrambling to get, the former member for Flinders and health minister, Greg Hunt made sure that our Indigenous communities and our Pacific neighbours were very much in line to get the jabs at the same time and at the same rate as any Australian. That's important because not only did we save lives and protect livelihoods in Australia; we did it in the Pacific.

Under the former coalition government, there were many headspaces put into country communities. I know headspace Cowra opened up whilst we were very much in government, and 1,400 additional nurse placements for the regions were funded and supported during a coalition government. We talk about doctors, but everyone should always put a value on what our nurses do. They are angels of mercy, and we should be doing everything we can to ensure that we have more nurses. We put in place 94 million telehealth consultations, through Medicare, to 16 million patients. I know Labor come in and make out as if they're the only ones who protect Medicare. For every election in the recent past, there's been this big scaremongering campaign saying that we're going to somehow dismantle Medicare. The next speaker will probably claim that too. It's nonsense. It's a furphy. If you don't know what a furphy is, it's a country term for something that just isn't true. Go and look it up. It's very much a furphy.

When we talk about telehealth, when we come to that very important discussion, it's important to note that you'll never replace a face-to-face consultation—I appreciate that—but telehealth with modern technology is important, particularly in rural and regional Australia. So too were the 857 new medicines put on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme between 2019 and when we, unfortunately, lost government. This is one thing I will say in favour of the minister for health: any medicine that can go through that PBAC process and be placed on the register is a good thing. That is absolutely a good thing, and it saves lives. We've got a very proud record of supporting a strong PBS in Australia—a very strong record—whereas, in stark contrast, when we took over government in 2013, under Tony Abbott, the Labor government at the time had stopped listing new medicines because they couldn't manage the nation's finances. That is a sad reality. That isn't a furphy. That's actually the truth. They capped the number of new medicines that could be considered for listing on the PBS, and that created unacceptable delays for patients whose lives very much depend on them.

I appreciate that the Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 is important. It also galled me somewhat when I had the opportunity to listen to the member for Kooyong. The teals come in here, and they're never happy. They're a glum lot. The member for Kooyong was talking about how piecemeal this legislation is. They never tell us what they will do. They'll bag Labor and they hate the Liberal-National coalition, but they'll never actually tell us what they'll do. They're always that pious group that have aways got every answer to every problem, but they'll never give you the solution. They'll tell you how terrible the major parties are going, but—like independents, always—they're just, quite frankly, nothing more than an inbox for complaints. They pretend as though, make out as if, they're the panacea for all the nation's ills and woes but never tell you exactly what they'd do if they were in government. Seriously, it's just a joke.

But I appreciate this particular legislation is important. Medicare is important. It's been delivering for 40 years, and I'm more than happy to acknowledge that. As a coalition government, we were proud of what we did in the bulk-billing space and proud of the fact that we did keep Medicare going. We've got the best health system in the world—we do—and, as an Australian and a member of this parliament, I'm very proud of that fact.

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