Kym Richardson (Kingston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister update the House on how the government’s commitment to improving Medicare is delivering more bulk-billing services to those who need them? How is this helping people in my electorate of Kingston?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can certainly understand the member for Kingston’s enthusiasm for this question because I can inform him and the House that the GP bulk-billing rates in his electorate have gone up by more than 10 percentage points since the government’s ‘Strengthening Medicare’ program began. Bulk-billing is not the be-all and end-all of Medicare but it is important and it should be widely available, particularly to families and pensioners, and that is precisely what has happened thanks to the policies of the Howard government.

We have had the latest statistics on bulk-billing released since the parliament was last sitting. I am sure members opposite in particular will be delighted to know that the bulk-billing rate for children under 16 is 84.9 per cent, an all-time high; the bulk-billing rate for people over 65 is 87.3 per cent, an all-time high; the bulk-billing rate in country areas is 72.6 per cent, also an all-time high; and the overall bulk-billing rate for GPs and specialists, at 73.2 per cent, is at an all-time high, significantly higher than the bulk-billing rate we inherited in March of 1996. Members opposite, including the sound effects man over there, hate hearing this because what these bulk-billing rates prove is that the Howard government is undeniably and indisputably—and I know they do not like hearing it but let’s hear it again—the best friend that Medicare has ever had.

What these figures also demonstrate is that the Australian Labor Party now has no distinctive health policy of its own, except, if the Leader of the Opposition is to be believed, actually cutting Medicare spending. In a rather rambling interview on the Jon Faine program last month, the Leader of the Opposition said:

Well when you look at the amount of money which is wasted in duplication overlap in the health and hospital system ... I believe there is great scope to extract significant savings.

When I heard him say, ‘I believe there is great scope to extract significant savings’ on health, I wondered whether that was him being an economic conservative or whether he was back in his previous guise as an old-fashioned Christian socialist. Either way, the Australian people deserve to know exactly what he meant. If there are significant savings to be made, how much and where exactly are they going to come from? Let me make this point: the Howard government can only afford to increase spending on Medicare because we have a strong economy. If the economy is ever taken for granted, Medicare funding will be put seriously at risk too.