Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with the member for Ryan in congratulating Laurie Lawrence on his work in water safety and working with the government on the DVDs. In my electorate I have also been providing families with free DVDs to help them understand the importance of water safety with their children and I would like to acknowledge the Redcliffe Leagues Club and the Aquatic Centre for helping me distribute that information to their little toddlers class the other day. There are way too many young lives lost and there certainly have been some very tragic incidents in very recent times in relation to dams and safety around dams.

That leads me into the issue I wish to talk about in the brief time I have. I wish to talk about health. Health is a very important issue. I have spoken many times on health in this chamber and I will continue to rise and speak on health issues, because health is a priority for the Rudd government. Once again the Senate is being asked to consider the private health insurance rebate bill. It is at this time that we ask opposition members over in the Senate to give serious consideration to how genuine they are about their commitment to health and health reform in this country. To willingly block $2 billion that could be utilised in other health areas and go towards the health budget is an absolute disgrace. There are many reasons, and there have been for a number of years, why that money is desperately needed. A number of reports have come out as a consequence of the actions of the Rudd government that emphasise the importance of stepping up and doing something now in relation to health reform.

However I guess we have to look at the history. You cannot ignore the fact that the Leader of the Opposition, the former health minister, left a legacy of nationwide medical workforce shortages stretching across 74 per cent of Australia and affecting 60 per cent of the population. We know that the Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, took a billion dollars out of health and capped GP training places at 600. I cannot believe that at the time the Leader of the Opposition was Minister for Health he capped GP training places at 600 and thought that the solution was to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on purchasing golf balls to recruit doctors! That was the strategy. This member who was the Minister for Health at the time is now the Leader of the Opposition and puts himself forward as an alternative Prime Minister. This is a serious issue and it requires action from a government that is sensible, financially responsible and willing to ensure that the distribution of taxpayers’ dollars is done fairly, making sure that those who can afford the full amount for private health insurance or at a lower rebate do so, and that those additional funds are redistributed where they should be.

In the brief time that I have left, I take the chamber to the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report that talks about there being less than two per cent of health expenditure spent on preventative health and the fact that health costs are going to rise rapidly from $84 billion in 2003 to $246 billion by 2033, or about nine per cent of GDP now to 12.4 per cent of GDP in 2033. When you look at all of the statistics and information that came out of the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report and you put that together with what has been released now in the Intergenerational report and the fact that we are going to have a shortage in the workforce, only 2.7 people in the workforce for every person over the age of 65 years, you can see the enormity of the problem. You also look at the fact that we are an ageing population. The electorate of Petrie has a significant proportion of those who are of retirement age. We need to do more.

This government has done so much in relation to health reform in its first two years. There is more to be done. We need to ensure that we can pursue the reforms that need to be done to look after our health into the future. We need the private health insurance bill passed today.