Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to inform the House of startling new information obtained by the opposition today relating to the government’s expenditure in health. This new information makes it clear that the claims often made by the government about its performance in health are simply not right. Indeed, these figures show the hypocrisy of many of the claims that the government has made.

Every member of the House would recall that the Minister for Health and Ageing comes into this place regularly and spruiks the success of the Howard government in getting doctors into areas of need. But figures obtained today by the opposition through the Senate estimates process show that the truth is that the primary care strategies program was underspent by more than $80 million in 2004-05 due to a lower than expected take-up rate for the government’s program to get more graduate doctors into outer metropolitan areas and for other purposes such as the coordinated care trials and support for procedural GPs.

The hollowness of the government’s claims does not end there. The minister for health also frequently talks up the Howard government’s funding of practice nurses, but the figures obtained today show that the truth is that the take-up rate for the Practice Incentive Program, the GP IT support program, the broadband access for health program and the Practice Nurse Program was lower than expected, resulting in $55 million of allocated funds not being spent.

The minister also loves to laud the Howard government’s performance in after-hours care. But in 2005-06 there was an underspend on programs like Round the Clock Medicare and After Hours Primary Medical Care. The uptake was so low that $14 million was left unspent. In Indigenous health, an area of clear need, the minister has managed to underspend in 2004-05 by $24 million and again in 2005-06 by $21 million. The minister claims that he is really on the job when it comes to avian flu, but even there we see an underspend of almost $5 million.

The minister for health also holds himself out as the man who fixed the medical indemnity crisis. Either he got the dimensions of the crisis wrong or his fix is not working, because there was an underspend of almost $41 million in 2004-05 and a staggering $84 million in 2005-06.

The one thing that the minister for health is not out and about boasting about is his plan to further cut the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—a plan that is being worked on now and is likely to be revealed by the Howard government before the end of the year. Even in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme we see an underspend of almost $67 million in 2004-05 and almost $8 million in 2005-06. Unbelievably, the health department claims that this is because the demand for arthritis, antidepressant and cholesterol-lowering drugs has been lower than expected. Where is the evidence that in this community the rates of arthritis, depression and high cholesterol have gone down? The proposition is laughable.

What has in fact happened is that the Howard government’s policies when it comes to medicines have made medicines for these conditions unaffordable for a section of the community that is in need, because these people are already battling chronic illness. With the PBS cutback package of the Howard government’s Minister for Health and Ageing which we will most likely see between now and the end of the year, I fear that there is worse to come for these Australians who are in chronic need. Every health dollar is precious and should be spent to make a difference for a sick Australian. The minister for health is too incompetent to achieve that result.