Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Ballarat proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The impact of the Government's failure to implement preventative health measures and properly manage conflicts of interest within the Health portfolio.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with some reluctance that I bring on this matter of public importance—reluctance because I am someone who has worked almost their entire life in the public health and preventative health portfolios. It is probably one of the most important areas in health to try and prevent diseases, to work with public health organisations on what works in prevention and to try and manage those conditions. But never before have I seen a circumstance where almost every public health organisation in the country is coming to me to express its concern about the Assistant Minister for Health, who has responsibility in this government for prevention. Never before have I seen public health officers across the country from a breadth of organisations show this level of concern about a minister this early, for a start, and certainly about a minister who has responsibility for—

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

one of the most important areas for health.

We all know that the greatest challenges we are facing in health today are those conditions that are preventable. Clearly the member opposite does not understand this or care about preventive health or what his assistant minister has done. We all know that the greatest challenges are in the area of prevention. We know that some of the greatest gains that we can have in the health space are in prevention, particularly to reduce obesity, to reduce diabetes and to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease and stroke—a very important area.

Let us have a look at what has happened recently in this space. When we were in government, we engaged Neal Blewett to undertake a comprehensive look at food labelling and, in particular, at what you could do in the space of food labelling to look at health promotion and prevention. One of the recommendations that Neal Blewett came up with was that there should be a traffic-light labelling system on the front of all packaged foods.

In government, Labor did not agree with this. We took the decision that we would not accept that recommendation. But we did understand that there was a clear demand from the Australian public for better information about the foods that they consume, particularly as we were starting to see a substantial increase in processed foods and packaged foods in our supermarkets. We knew that consumers did not understand the daily intake guide, the thumbnail sketch that you currently see on the front of all of the packages. So we agreed that there was a need to establish an interpretive front-of-pack labelling system but that it would not be traffic-light labelling or the daily intake guide.

When the government proposed this, many public health groups were hardly willing to participate in the process. They were unhappy with our decision not to back traffic-light labelling. They did not want to sit down with the food industry at all, but we managed to get them to the table. They said at the time that there was no possibility of getting any agreement with industry and no possibility of developing an interpretive system that had not already been explored that would provide consumers with accurate, truthful and clear information.

Instead, we saw two years of cooperation, two years of detailed work led, quite deliberately, by the Secretary of the Department of Health, Jane Halton, to bring industry together and to bring public health officials together to come up with such an interpretive system. That interpretive system is the star-rating system, a very good system. I encourage people, if you can actually find out any information about it, to look at it—and I am happy to share it with you. This was a very important piece of work. The system continued to be developed, and it was agreed to by all states and territories in June last year. The substantive system was agreed to in June. The system continued to be finalised after June. Communications material was developed. The website was developed. A steering group continued that work to develop the website. It was not just Labor on a frolic; in fact, most of the state governments which endorsed the system—an important system—were not Labor governments.

Subsequently, there was a meeting in December of the food regulatory ministers. At that meeting there was no substantive decision required about the health star-rating system. There were some technical details. The calculator had to be agreed to. But what we know from that meeting's communique is that Senator Nash, the Assistant Minister for Health, attempted to get that food star-rating system stopped. We see from the communique that what she did was to instruct her department to develop a cost-benefit analysis—not something that had any bearing on the system's further development, because it was a system agreed to by all state and territory ministers.

What is the reason that Senator Nash has not supported this system? Why on earth would she instruct her chief of staff, someone who we now know—and we now know she was aware—was the owner of a company that lobbied for the junk food industry, to take down a website providing information about this voluntary, agreed system? Why would she do such a thing?

Information about this has only come into the public domain because it was first reported by Amy Corderoy, the Health Editor in TheSydney Morning Herald. We have seen reports today that at least one of the companies that would receive a less favourable rating under the new system than its competitor products is one of the very companies that Senator Nash's former chief of staff represented.

Senator Nash is the minister who is supposed to represent the preventative health sector. In the words of The Sydney Morning Herald political editor, Peter Hartcher, Senator Nash 'is the Assistant Minister for Health but behaved like the minister for big sugar and alcohol'. That is a damning, damning indictment of a minister and it is certainly a damning indictment of a minister responsible for health promotion and prevention.

The minister's big achievements in her portfolio to date have been to rip down a website promoting an agreed, voluntary food labelling system and to shut down the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council. ADCA had been providing advice to government since Menzies was Prime Minister. But the government did not agree with what they had to say, so what did they do? They got rid of them. Why did Senator Nash insist that the website be taken down? We have heard three excuses. The first was that it was a draft and it was not ready. I can tell you: that is absolutely and simply not true and it has not been repeated by the Department of Health. The only person who, unfortunately, has repeated that was the Prime Minister, yesterday, and he was incorrect. The second excuse was that the system was not in place, so it would be confusing. The reason the system was not in place was that the website was actually required to be placed up so that industry could have access to the technical material, so that they could start using the system and so that consumers could be provided with information about the system.

The third excuse for the website being removed was that there was, apparently, unanimous agreement at the December meeting to do a cost-benefit analysis. A simple look at the communique will tell you that that is wrong. We have now got the South Australian and the Tasmanian health ministers confirming that this is absolutely incorrect. Senator Nash's decision to instruct her department to undertake a cost-benefit analysis is a matter entirely for her. That information may help to inform evaluation of the system; it had absolutely no bearing on the establishment of the system—already agreed in June. The minister has continued to allow that statement to be on record in the Senate and she has continued to refuse to back down from that misleading statement.

The whole point of the website was to provide information to consumers and information to industry to develop the system. We know from further information that has continued to come out—it is well documented—that the minister's former chief of staff was a director of a company that lobbied for the junk food industry. Indeed, he appears to have retained his directorship in the company right up until his resignation a fortnight ago—a resignation which, he claimed, had been done with a clear conscience. Contrary to what the Prime Minister said, that he had done something wrong, the chief of staff resigned with a completely clear conscience. It says a lot about the minister's priorities when it comes to preventive health that she should employ a junk food lobbyist as her chief of staff in the first place, let alone that she should allow that chief of staff to influence a decision as important as the front-of-pack health star-rating system.

I finish where I started. This is the minister in the government who is responsible for health promotion and prevention. I have never seen a circumstance where public health organisations from across the country, en masse, are calling on the government to reinstate the health food star-rating system and have no confidence in this government's minister. (Time expired)

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need to first understand why the opposition has brought forward this MPI today. It is very important to understand that it has nothing at all to do with preventive health. This is all about a distraction mechanism away from the issue of the day, which is the protection racket that Bill Shorten has been running to protect Craig Thomson and those officials within the HSU that sought to divert money away from people who work hard in public hospitals across the health system to put money into the pockets of these crooks.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I draw the minister's attention to the matter of public importance, which is about preventive health.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the point of order. The minister is aware of the matter before the chamber. I call the minister.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important to realise that the motivation behind this MPI is not about preventive health. It is not about some allegation that the Labor Party has trotted out to try to impugn the reputation of Minister Nash, who I think is doing an outstanding job in her portfolio. There is no allegation against Senator Nash which goes to inappropriate behaviour. The opposition has put forward nothing other than to say that a website was pulled down off the internet. No further allegation has been made against Senator Nash and yet this matter has continued on for a week. Why? Because the opposition want to distract attention away from the issues relating to Craig Thomson. There is no more motivation than that, and that is a shameful reflection on the shadow health minister and on those opposite. Let me tell members opposite: this government is determined to improve the health system. We are absolutely determined to clean up the mess that we inherited from the Labor Party, and there is a mess—not just in the area of preventive health but right across the portfolio and right across government.

Let me tell you some of the priorities that the Labor Party had in this particular area when they were in government. They contributed $463,000 to a study. It was a study on a fat tax. I said at the time that if the coalition were elected to government we would not under any circumstances implement a fat tax. I asked the then health minister, Minister Plibersek, to say whether or not the Labor Party would introduce a fat tax if re-elected. If it was her desire to have the matter properly examined for consideration after the election, then she should have been up-front about it and provided that assurance so that there was some guarantee that this study was going to some purpose. The former minister was not able to provide that guarantee. She was not able to provide the guarantee; so, regardless of the election outcome, this tax was never going to proceed. But did that stop the former government from saving this $463 million? No, it did not. They went ahead because they have absolute disregard for taxpayers' money. That is the reason we find ourselves with $123 billion of cumulative deficits. It is why we face a deficit, which will continue to rise, and an overall debt position of $667 billion. Yet we come into this place and hear from those opposite that we should be spending money here, there and everywhere else. I say to those members opposite: the waste under Labor did not stop there.

There was a fake smokescreen music festival. They decided to spend $236,000, not on patients in hospitals that wanted elective surgery, not on pensioners that needed to get to the emergency department or to see a specialist more quickly but on a fake music festival designed to use fake musical festival posters and a Facebook page to deliver their message. In true Labor fashion, they trumpeted this as a great success. There were 244 'likes' across the country on Facebook. My maths is not too bad, but I will give you round figures of $1,000 a like. If Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd could have paid $1,000 for a friend, they would have taken that option in the leadership ballot before the election campaign. But they did not.

What else did Labor spend money on? They are so pious, as they come in here to talk to us about the preventative health space. They spent almost $50,000 on the Summernats burnouts. Somehow that was going to provide an improvement to our health system. But not having learnt their lesson for wasting $50,000, they spent $80,000 in 2014—$130,000 on burning rubber over two years. But when you compare that to the $650 million that they wasted in the so-called superclinics program then, I suppose, it is not a bad investment by Labor's standards.

This is a very serious issue because not only do we have to clean up Labor's mess but we also have to provide for the future. We have to recognise the fact that Alzheimer's numbers have increased by 170 per cent over the last 10 years, so I do not want to be wasting money in the health portfolio. I want to be putting it into medical research. I want to help us find a cure for dementia. I want us to put money into research for type I diabetes. I do not want to spend it on websites and 'likes' costing $1,000 a hit. I want to spend the money on patients and I want to spend it in areas that are productive in the health system. I say to members opposite that this clean-up has only just commenced. I want to make sure that we are getting efficiency for taxpayers' money that we spend in this portfolio.

We now spend over $60 billion a year in health. It is a very important spend which has continued to grow under both Liberal and Labor but it must grow at a sustainable rate. We cannot afford the waste that Labor presided over. We cannot afford to spend money on frivolous pursuits. I want to make sure that we can spend money on GPs so that people can get in to see a GP, can have a meaningful relationship with that GP or can get in to see a specialist and get off a waiting list as quickly as possible. I want to make sure we can address the diabetes rates. I want to make sure that, when we look at the statistics of two in three Australians now obese or overweight, we can help those people into the future. But we cannot do that if we are presiding over tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of waste as Labor would have us do. I want to make sure that we can afford to pay for the medical services into the future. Ten years ago we spent just over $8 billion on MBS items—the doctors, pathology, diagnostic services otherwise. Today we are spending $18 billion. It is continuing to grow and grow.

If we want to deliver those health services into the future we have to clean up Labor's wasted mess. That is the theme of this government. We were elected to clean up the mess that Labor left behind in the economy. We will clean up the mess that they left in the area of health and preventive health. We will make sure that we can deliver good value to taxpayers and deliver better health outcomes to all Australians.

If the Labor Party is so interested in what we are specifically doing in the area of preventative health, apart from providing extra support to GPs and rebuilding the primary healthcare network across the country, we promised additional money for bowel screening, which is an incredibly important investment for us to make because bowel cancer kills over 4,000 Australians each year. The reason we want to make it easier to get in to see a GP—we do not want people waiting weeks—is that early detection can make the difference between life and death. If we can get those people to see their GP, to be screened, to talk about the risks, to make sure they can look at their health needs, then we have to make tough decisions. We have made tough decisions because we have taken money away from Labor's waste in health and put it into productive areas like bowel screening.

We have put money into diabetes, as I say, not just in type 1 diabetes research but into the national diabetes strategy. We promised $200 million of research into dementia at the last election. We said, despite the fact that we have been left over $100 billion of accumulated deficits and $667 billion of debt from the Labor Party, that we would quarantine cuts from medical research in this country and that is absolutely vital to the way in which we address all of these health needs going forward.

I want to make sure that we can continue the investment that we make into water safety programs, an incredibly important area of prevention in this portfolio. There is an additional $15 million in water safety programs that we committed to as a federal government. We are putting record amounts of money into mental health, into headspace sites, into the comprehensive e-mental health platform, into dementia research and much more that I have not got time to address today. But, be assured, we will clean up Labor's mess and we will get the health system back on track.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this matter of public importance. I do find it disappointing that the Minister for Health could only find about one minute to talk about preventative health measures, because he talks a lot about the cost of health and about why people need to pay $6 when they go to the GP. Every time, we here him talking about how costs are blowing out. He is softening the electorate up for big cuts.

What all the health professionals out there will tell you is that investing in prevention is critically important, ensuring that people are prevented from getting sick in the first place. One of the critical things about preventative health is preventing obesity. That is one of the key things that a lot of health professionals will say is so important when it comes to preventing things like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and the like.

One of those important things is helping people with their daily intake. In fact, I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing that reported on and undertook a critically important inquiry into obesity in Australia. One of the things that really came out from the evidence we heard is that people would like to easily be able to determine what is in their food in the packets on the supermarket shelves. We heard from mums and dads who said they would like to know whether or not they were buying a healthy alternative. That was really critical for them.

Indeed, it can be very confusing, because packets of food look very similar. We have seen today from Choice—they actually use the star-rating system which we are debating—that they found, for example, under the algorithm, that Bega's Stringers cheese would receive a 4½ star, whereas the Kraft Strip cheese would only receive two stars. They are very similar products with very different nutritional value. According to Choice, the Nabisco Ritz crackers would get half a star and the Arnott's Jatz Originals would get two stars. So we can see that products that look very similar can actually have very different nutritional value. Parents and people who visit the supermarket in their busy lives would love to look at the front of the pack and be able to see how much nutritional value is in the product rather than trying to work out what the sodium content is, what the fat content is, what the saturated fat content is and what the trans fat content is. A simple front of package is really important.

Public health experts, mums and dads and a whole range of public advocates are saying that this is the way to go: 'Let’s have front-of-pack labelling that is simple to understand and can easily be seen.' What is more, this system is voluntary, and food manufacturers can work out whether or not they want to apply this system. So it seems very confusing that, when the states and territories have been working on this, when public advocates have got to the point where they believe that it is ready to go and when even the food industry, while they might not like it, have come to the position where they do understand it and some are willing to endorse it because it is voluntary, the new Assistant Minister for Health pulls this website.

We have heard differing versions about why this was. First it was a draft. She said that it was a draft and should never have been put up. Michael Moore, from the Public Health Association, said that it was 'inconceivable' that the website was only a draft. He said:

I looked at it very carefully, and there was nothing that struck me about it as being a draft. It just doesn't make sense.

Then we got Senator Nash's second excuse: that it was premature and it was not ready to go. That is not the view of state health ministers, who believe that it was finalised and ready to go in December. I have a letter here from the Hon. Jack Snelling saying that he has extreme concerns that the healthy star-rating website that went live on 5 February has apparently been withdrawn without discussion through the Front-of-Pack Labelling Steering Committee. The only evidence we have is Senator Nash saying that it was premature, but of course that has been debunked.

The third excuse was that it needed a cost-benefit analysis. As a lot of people have made very clear in this debate and previous, there was no evidence in the communique of the health ministers that any cost-benefit analysis— (Time expired)

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Never before in this place have I heard such rank hypocrisy from those opposite—never. Here they are with their mock outrage, having themselves when in government been associated with the most desperate dysfunctional and scandal-plagued administration in living memory; in fact, in history. Senator Fiona Nash is a palpably good person who, in her role as Assistant Minister for Health, is getting on with the difficult task of helping to repair Labor's mess. She is particularly getting out and about in regional and rural areas asking questions and, more importantly, hearing what country people have to say and providing hope for a better, brighter and healthier future.

All we have heard from those opposite in this matter of public importance debate today is an attack on Senator Nash. All we have heard is members opposite feigning indignation. They know that this is nothing more than a storm in a teacup—confected outrage to an absurd extreme. There has been no failure by the government to implement preventative health measures or to properly manage any aspects of the health portfolio. This is a smear campaign—nothing more, nothing less. It is a desperate move by a desperate opposition seeking a scalp. That is all this is.

This opposition left the nation with a legacy of debt and deficit. It is unsustainable. Labor in government was racked with controversy, in-fighting and scandal. There was daily disorder in the house of Labor. But don't just take my word for it; ask Mr and Mrs Average in any main street in any town in Australia, particularly any regional centre. Venture along, for example, Hoskins Street in Temora and ask anybody you come across about the former government and ask anybody about Senator Nash. They will give you two different responses. They will have anger and bewilderment about what Labor did to this country, particularly in the health space. In reply to how they perceive the Assistant Minister for Health, they will tell you about what a good person she is, how dedicated she is and the good outcomes she is trying to achieve on behalf of all Australians, particularly those who live far away from the bright city lights. Senator Nash is a familiar face in Temora. She headed up a health forum on 5 February where she informed, listened to, engaged with and provided hope for the good local people there who want and need better health outcomes, and better health measures and services.

The Prime Minister said in question time today that the former health minister, now the shadow deputy opposition leader, slashed $1.6 billion from the health budget in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in 2012. This included tens of millions of dollars of cuts to the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in the same city.

Those opposite talk about pulling down websites. Need I mention Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch—broken Labor promises. The shadow health minister, the member for Ballarat, spoke of a cost-benefit analysis—and I am surprised that she even knew what a cost-benefit analysis was—and pulling down a draft health star rating website which was not ready to go online, and Senator Nash has explained that fully.

If Labor were serious about preventive health measures, which it is not—but just imagine for a second that the once great ALP actually cared about preventive health—then it would congratulate us. The coalition has a long and proud record on preventive health both under the former coalition government under then health minister Tony Abbott, and very much under this current government under Mr Abbott's prime ministership. If Labor truly cared, then it would acknowledge that under Tony Abbott's term as health minister in the Howard government, Australia experienced: the sharpest decline in smoking rates; the largest increase in childhood immunisation rates; more than doubled the number of medical graduates; and championed research and funding for the human papillomavirus vaccination to eliminate cervical cancer. That is not funny; it is a serious women's health issue and I am surprised that once again those opposite are out there with their confected outrage, knocking something that we did to help women's health. I am surprised that they are even smiling about it.

Our record stands in stark contrast to those opposite. In government Labor implemented some of the worst health policy decisions imaginable. In the six long years Labor was in government it created: 12 new bureaucracies; created a $650 million GP Super Clinics program, where 26 promised clinics are still not open; introduced a $1 billion e-health record system that commenced in 2012 that GPs still do not use and which only has 31,000 users with a clinical record upload. This MPI is a joke. Senator Nash is doing a fine job and getting on with it. (Time expired)

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take up the last words of the previous speaker in terms of saying that Minister Nash is doing a 'fine job'. Surely, that sums up those opposite—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Stop there!

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in terms of their approach to preventive health. We heard from the member for Dickson all about derision and division—there was no vision at all!

A government member interjecting—

Then we hear from a National Party member—and there is no plan for the bush. I speak as a Queenslander, the most decentralised state. What do we have happening in Queensland? As I am sure you are well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, the reality is that they have dropped the ball when it comes to health. We have doctors about to go on strike up and down the eastern seaboard. Up where the giant mango went missing, we have got doctors about to go on strike. Why? Because the LNP have deserted doctors.

Last week I went to the Pineapple Hotel to hear from 536 VMOs talking about the way that Campbell Newman and Lawrence Springborg have come hunting for doctors. They have handed out an amazing approach to preventive health. Their approach to preventive health is to get rid of doctors. They have handed them a take-it-or-leave-it approach, basically, to welfare and medical health by saying, 'Here is the contract. We have done all the negotiating possible'—and of course the head of the AMA in Queensland Christian Rowan, the LNP candidate—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The motion before the House, the MPI, is tightly defined by the mover of the MPI, the shadow health minister. She has put the MPI forward in relation to preventive health, and it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the member for Moreton could be within the confines of that MPI. I would ask you, please and quite sincerely, to bring the member for Moreton back to the MPI to be relevant to what is going on in this debate, not what is happening in Queensland. At the moment he is completely out of order.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his point of order. The member for Moreton will observe that the MPI before the House is that the government's failure to implement refers to this government, not another government in Australia. I call the member for Moreton.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously, the health minister is aware that this is a Federation. This government does not run many hospitals. Actually the Queensland hospitals are run by the Queensland government. But I do take his point. I listened with much interest to his point about the union health dollars. I went to meet with the union, represented—

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By the HSU—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, we do not have an HSU in Queensland. I met with the AMA, a very powerful union. Christian Rowan is the head of the AMA in Queensland, and he had an interesting approach to this. Because the minister started speaking about unions in his response to the MPI, I assumed it was the topic that we should address.

Obviously preventive health is very important—we all know that. In fact I encourage every member here tomorrow to come up to the Richard Baker Room to have a diabetes health check so that we can all do our little bit to give a personal example to our electorates about how we can be healthy. All day tomorrow, I will be up there with Ken Wyatt—and maybe after the book launch tonight, you might need to go, I say to the parliamentary secretary. So it is important that we focus on preventive health, and having a healthy workforce that is well treated is an important part of that. Getting rid of thousands of doctors, many of them specialists in Queensland, who are going to withdraw their labour because of this incredible industrial relations approach of those opposite, is an interesting approach.

The minister did talk about unions and the role they play and so it was interesting to hear these doctors in Queensland last week say that they have been told by Lawrence Springborg that they should be able to work any shift that they are directed to work by their boss—without consultation and irrespective of parental duties. In fact they would get rid of a no-disadvantage clause in their work contracts. They would also possibly have arbitrary dismissal with no recourse back to the doctor and no binding arbitration process for dispute resolution.

This is a recipe for disaster being delivered in Queensland at the moment. It is going to mean that there will be longer waiting lists and more people turning up to emergency departments especially when the minister brings in his tax on GP visits that they flagged in the Griffith by-election and which they are hiding in Western Australia as we go to an election over there. (Time expired)

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this MPI which relates to preventive health. When we think about preventive health, there are lots of different elements, but the three really big ones are: tobacco, alcohol and obesity. I want to talk a little bit about Australia's record in tobacco control and the Liberal Party's record in tobacco control. When you look at those three, our results in tobacco control have been outstanding—we really lead the world—and there have largely been bipartisan efforts in that.

In 1966 Sir Robert Menzies introduced a voluntary tobacco advertising code. In 1976 the Fraser government introduced the first ban on advertising tobacco products on TV and radio. In 1992, in opposition, the Liberal Party supported a ban on tobacco advertising, and in 1997, Michael Wooldridge, as health minister, introduced the first-ever national advertising campaign against smoking and spent, at that time, $7 million. It was well researched, it was a comprehensive strategy and it has been a large part of why we have seen such dramatic results in this area.

When we moved to the new tax system we reformed tobacco excise, moving away from a weight basis to a per stick excise—something which was welcomed by all the health groups. The Prime Minister, as then health minister, introduced the first graphic health warnings on tobacco in 2006. In opposition, it was the current health minister, the member for Dickson, who proposed an increase in tobacco excise in the 2009 budget reply speech. When we had the debate about plain paper packaging and increasing the size of graphic health warnings, those changes were supported by the then opposition.

And what have we seen? We have seen a fall in smoking rates from 21.8 per cent in 1998 down to 16.6 per cent by 2007. What we have seen over the almost 20 years from 1989 to 2007 were declines in smoking rates in Australia of 40 per cent for men and 44 per cent for women. These were amongst the biggest falls anywhere in the world, and for women were the biggest falls in the OECD.

There are lots of other parts of preventative health that we could talk about. Immunisation: one of the proud achievements of the Howard government was getting immunisation rates back up to where they should be—seeing immunisation rates for one-, two- and five-year-olds of over 90 per cent. We did it with incentives for GPs and we did it working with the divisions of general practice.

Prior to the election we made a number of commitments which relate to this area. The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, a program which was first established by Minister Michael Wooldridge in 1996, is coming up for its 20th anniversary. We made a commitment at the election to expand the program, with increased screening for people aged 50 to 74. Diabetes: over the last 20 years we have seen the incidence of diabetes double in Australia. We have announced the National Diabetes Strategy and we also have the work which is being done by McKinsey and some of the Medicare Locals, looking at better coordinated care and how we can get better results for people with diabetes. As the Minister for Health said, medical research is an important issue for us. We have said that this will be quarantined from any inefficiencies found in government, and we have also announced $200 million in dementia related research.

When you look at the area of alcohol, the government had reports going back to 2009 which actually identified brief interventions by primary-care physicians to reduce hazardous alcohol consumption as something which was still an untapped opportunity in Australia. It is not something that they have addressed, and that is actually something which I think does show great promise—just one, two or three sessions with a GP costs little but leads to good results.

But then we come to the area where we are not doing well, the area of obesity and overweight. Sixty-three per cent of adults are now obese or overweight, and that is well up. But we had Kevin Rudd's 'war on obesity' and we had national partnership agreements which measured the amount of fruit and vegetables eaten and the amount of exercise et cetera and, actually, we have gone backwards. (Time expired)

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on an issue close to the heart of my predecessor in Gellibrand, and to voice my concern that such an important issue has been so abused by the current government.

The advocacy of preventative health measures was a cornerstone of the previous Labor government's health policy. In fact, my predecessor in the seat of Gellibrand, Nicola Roxon, was an internationally recognised champion of preventative health measures. As health minister, she championed the National Preventative Health Taskforce in 2008, a source of information and evidence about the best way to address the preventable obesity and alcohol and tobacco related illnesses that affect our community.

This was followed in 2009 by the National Preventative Health Strategy, which articulated a government plan for tackling these and other preventable illnesses head on. These actions were taken because we all know that reaching out to people before they are ill is far more effective than addressing illness when it is too late. This can be seen throughout Australia, but particularly in my electorate, where preventable diseases cause untold damage to the lives of constituents in Gellibrand.

In Gellibrand over five per cent of the population currently suffers from diabetes, with just as many people again suffering from undiagnosed or pre-diabetes. These preventable chronic diseases have an enormous impact on the lives of sufferers and their families. These diseases increase the cost of our healthcare system, reduce the productivity of our workers and lower the workforce participation rate in our community.

There are simple steps that government can take to manage the impact of preventable chronic disease by making consumers more aware of the risks and giving them control over their own health. The Health Star Rating System was one way of giving Australian people that control. It was a key part of a food-labelling initiative aimed at ensuring that people knew the health impacts of what they were eating. And yet, all it took was one phone call from the office of a National Party senator to have the program pulled by the department.

Senator Nash claimed that this decision was a unanimous decision by the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation, in order to conduct an 'extensive cost-benefit analysis'. But there was no unanimous decision by the legislative governance forum. Senator Nash's office made this call itself, and it is hard to believe that this was not done in the presence of her then chief of staff, Mr Furnival, a 50 per cent shareholder in one of the biggest lobbying firms for food and drink interests on the hill. Relying on the advice of the owner of a lobbying business with clients in the food and beverage industry when considering whether to publish a healthy food website is a textbook example of conflict of interest. But, apparently, the Abbott government feels that this clear breach of the ministerial code of conduct is all right.

This government is more extreme and more out of touch than the Howard government ever was. It took John Howard 15 months before he binned his ministerial code of conduct, but the Abbott government has got there in just six months. The Prime Minister's failure to act against Senator Nash represents a betrayal of his commitment to the Australian public that:

We will be a no surprises, no excuses government, …

Unfortunately, this slogan has not made the transition from opposition to government.

The coalition promised that they would have a plan for governing if elected to office. Indeed, they made it the title of their election manifesto. And yet, we see in their administration of government no plan whatsoever. All we have seen is a government that lurches from administrative catastrophe to administrative catastrophe. Therein lies the rub.

The Prime Minister could have acknowledged this failure. The Prime Minister could have asked Senator Nash to resign. He could have led a grown-up government that he promised and not simply passed the buck. But we see in this instance that the children are in charge of the candy store. The PM stubbornly—in fact, childishly—refused to acknowledge that the existence of this conflict of interest was a problem. Indeed, he asserted yesterday that this behaviour was within the guidelines of the ministerial code of conduct. If the ministerial code of conduct has not been breached in a case like this, then it is not worth the paper it is written on. If the ministerial code of conduct does not discipline this sort of behaviour, we have a problem not just with the minister but with the entire government.

This breach is symptomatic of a government that does not think of the interests of the Australian people. It is symptomatic of a government that is out of touch and out of control. The government must stop playing games with preventative health. The government must recognise a conflict of interests when they see one and ask Senator Nash to resign. It is time for the former Leader of the Opposition to become a Prime Minister, show some leadership and start governing. The time for three-word slogans and one-sentence rhetoric has passed. It is time to start governing. It is time to start doing some of the work of government. The empty rhetoric has gone on for too long. It is time we saw some accountability.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think this matter of public importance is quite astonishing. The amazing hypocrisy and the amazing chutzpah are too hard to swallow. How can the other side be criticising a hardworking minister when they have such a prodigious record of waste and incompetence when they were in charge of the health portfolio?

When we talk about preventative health we are expecting things that will lead to some change in behaviour but, as anyone knows, looking at a website is not going to change a shopper's behaviour. Can you imagine a busy mum walking down the aisles with her children saying, 'Can we get this?' and the mum saying: 'Stop, kids. I will just look up the website and see whether we will get it'? No. It is broad education about the virtues of good, healthy food. It is going to the greengrocer instead of buying packaged products. It is knowing that something that runs, eats grass, hops, flies or swims—natural animal protein—is good for you. Anything you pull out of the ground or pick off a tree is probably going to be healthy. Processed foods are not as nutritious as natural foods. It is fairly basic. A website is not going to do anything because the only people who will go to the website will be people who are already motivated and thinking like that. There is a profusion of websites.

The other side is the team who brought us the $650 million superclinics fiasco. I have one in my electorate. There was a contract for over $7 million. They knocked down half of a nursing home and it is still a construction site three years later. I have been working in hospitals for over 30 years. In the last few years I saw the fiasco of the e-health records. They managed to spend $1 billion on that, but only 31,000 people have actually had any of their records uploaded to the site. I might add that 1.3 million people have asked to go on it but they have managed to get just over 31,000 people onto it.

We also have 12 new health bureaucracies. I am sure bureaucrats will not be able to deliver preventative health outcomes except by a very long bow, particularly since none of these health bureaucracies existed before. What about the chronic disease dental program? That was binned. Bad dental health can lead to so many other complications with cardiovascular health and general nutrition. How can you chew healthy food if you do not have teeth? So many common-sense things were thrown out the window, yet they have the temerity to criticise a hardworking health ministry.

What about medical research? In 2011 the Labor Party had the hide to take away $400 million from the NHMRC. You only have to look at the record of the coalition government. The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, a coalition initiative, is being rolled out to people up to 74 years of age on a biennial basis. Talk about prevention and early intervention—that will save lives.

What about the diabesity epidemic and diabetes in particular? The national diabetes plan coordinates all levels of government and health delivery into a single plan. Getting immunisation rates up from a very low level to over 90 per cent is prevention. Immunisation is one of the greatest public health initiatives but it only works if there are enough people so you get herd immunity. If your percentage drops, the system is very fruitless. Getting the immunisation rate in young children above 90 per cent delivered huge outcomes, and that was a coalition initiative.

The current commitment to medical research is $859 million at its peak. That is a great increase. The coalition is committed to increasing GP training, particularly in rural and remote areas, areas that our Assistant Minister for Health has visited on many occasions. She has been doing a great job. This is a simple distraction from their own problems. (Time expired)

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to this matter of public importance debate that deals with two very pressing matters: firstly, our response to issues of preventative health and, secondly, the way in which this government is conducted. I echo the comments of the member for Ballarat at the outset when she highlighted the importance of preventative health. I know from my own electorate that issues like obesity and diabetes are pressing and real concerns that cause untold costs to individuals who are affected and their families. There are also the much greater social and economic costs of these chronic conditions.

I also take this opportunity to acknowledge the many and very significant bipartisan achievements in the area of preventative health, as were outlined in the contribution of the member for Boothby. I think it is also important that we acknowledge here that many of these achievements appear to be under significant threat because there are some fundamental differences between Labor and the members opposite in the area of health.

This month we mark 30 years of Medicare, after it was re-established by the Hawke Labor government. Medicare is under threat, along with its core principle—our core principle—that access to health care should be based on need and not an individual's capacity to pay. The Prime Minister, a former minister for health, has described himself as Medicare's best friend in much the same way he has described himself as the best friend of Australian workers; I think in foreign policy he is best friends with lots and lots of people. There is a common thread across all of these 'friendships': they do not turn out very well for the other party, whether its foreign policy, health or, most grievously and most apparently, workers in Australia—particularly those who have lost their jobs over the life of this government.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you met one?

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have met plenty; I am not sure about you. The tragedy is there are nearly 70,000 people who are no longer working since your government was elected. One million jobs is a long way away.

We have the ongoing spectre of the GP tax—this ostensible savings measure. It looks like a savings measure, but we are possibly looking at a $2 billion impact, as well as the prospect of tripling waiting times in emergency departments. This is the antithesis of Labor's emphasis on preventative health. Preventative health is no longer a priority, despite impressive bipartisan achievements in the past.

I am deeply concerned that Medicare Locals are under threat under this government. They remain under threat, despite some weasel words in the lead-up to the election and more particularly despite the great record of achievement in linking people to primary health services and making a huge difference—certainly in the communities of north Melbourne and, I understand, right across this country. It is really telling, when we think about this government's commitment to preventative health, that of the 10 minutes available to the minister he might have spent at least one minute talking about his responsibilities. I am guessing, and I think I am being generous, but he spent 20 seconds on preventative health. This is in stark contrast to some of the later contributions, in particular that of the member for Boothby, who dealt with the serious and substantive matter that is before us today.

Public health professionals are making it very clear: the assistant minister is not capable of doing her job. Public health groups have made it very clear, and they are right to do so, that they have no confidence in the minister. There is no doubt that the health star-rating system should be reinstated. The two years of collaborative work—the sort of detailed, deep, bipartisan work involving states and territories, involving industry, consumer groups and public health groups—should be supported. It should be reinstated. Two years of work cannot be lost or buried under this unconvincing sophistry. These are extraordinary events from the point at which the website was made live on 6 February, prompting an immediate reaction by the former chief of staff and then, when that was not enough, by the minister herself. And what did we see by way of outcomes? We did see some consequences visited on the chief of staff, but only after a public servant, doing their job, was effectively punished. And it is important, despite what was said by the previous speaker. We have already seen Choice's work in using this system to inform consumers as to what can be deceptive assessments of products in the marketplace.

When this government was initiated, there was some debate about the titles adopted by ministers. But when we see the Assistant Minister for Health, the minister responsible for health promotion, we see a minister being anything but an advocate for those causes.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party have the arrogance and the absolute gall to come into this chamber and attack the government for our handling of the health portfolio. Well, we should take a look at their record. Labor have a track record for generating huge funding uncertainty in health by making gung-ho decisions and breaking promises.

The Labor health minister slashed $1.6 billion from public hospital services without notice and without consultation. She tore funding from health retrospectively for services that had already been provided, forcing hospitals to cancel surgeries and close beds. Shameful behaviour! The previous health minister consistently proved to be a traitor to the medical profession and the Australian people when it came to health funding. My constituents are outraged by Labor pulling $4 billion out of private health insurance rebates, despite promising never to do so. This decision is still forcing up premiums for Australians struggling to pay their cover and putting more pressure on Australia's public hospitals.

For another example of Labor's waste we need look no further than the GP superclinics program. It was heralded as one of the great Labor programs under the previous health minister, where now, instead of promised GP superclinics, we have taxpayer funded—debt funded—vacant paddocks. Of the 64 clinics that were promised since 2007, 26 are still not open. The previous health minister triumphed this as one of Labor's great successes. It seems as though the previous health minister thought it was April Fools' Day when announcing this $650 million program as a success—$650 million which was borrowed by the Labor government to set up 12 new bureaucracies and put money into superclinics, none of which makes any difference to actual patients. As the member for Lyons said before: $7 million and still a construction site in his electorate. Obviously, Labor think having actual GPs in GP superclinics is not as important as a newspaper headline, no matter the cost.

While the Labor government may not have known much, they sure knew how to waste money. Labor beat their chest, claiming that they created more jobs in health, and yet thousands of these 'new jobs' were for backroom administrative staff. Obviously the previous Labor government were more interested in jobs for bureaucrats than front-line staff, doctors and nurses for sick patients. Throughout the previous six years, Labor trawled through the budget with Jack the Ripper style ambitions. Labor's butchering of the health portfolio pales into insignificance in comparison to the fiscal holocaust left in their wake. What kind of incompetence runs through the veins of the Labor Party to turn $50 billion in the bank into a projected net debt well over $200 billion? Labor arrogantly hold the record of the fastest deterioration in debt, in dollar terms and as a share of GDP, in modern Australian history. Yet, they are still content to stand on the opposition benches, grinning like children who stole all the cookies from the cookie jar. Even after the Australian people threw Labor out, the legacy of Labor's debt remains, the debt which they so proudly claim saved jobs. We have seen jobless queues grow under Labor, but they still seem to have selective hearing when it comes to the facts. Even when the jobless queues grow, even when their policies—born in debt—failed, they still hold their heads high and are proud of this monumental mountain of debt.

This debt is costing the Australian people $10 billion a year in interest. That is five new hospitals a year, or two million hospital beds a year. It is thousands of new doctors and medical staff in rural and regional areas. Ten billion dollars a year is free prostate cancer preventative screening treatment for every Australian man. Ten billion dollars a year is Medicare rebates for constant glucose monitoring sensors for every sufferer of diabetes in this country. Ten billion dollars a year is billions of dollars for innovation in medical and scientific research. It has all gone.

It has gone as a result of Labor's constant and unadulterated abuse of the nation's finances. It has gone as a result of members opposite treating Australia's hard-earned money as their own plaything, acting time after time with no responsibility and no respect. The fact that Labor has the audacity to stand in this place today and accuse the government of any failure at all shows their complete excommunication from reality.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion has concluded.