Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. What is the government doing to ensure the sustainability and universality of Medicare? Is the minister aware of any alternative policy being proposed?

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

I thank the member for his question. People have seen right through question time today, and really since the budget, that Labor is full of complaint but not solution. We have put forward a solution in this budget to make sure that Medicare is sustainable. Over the course of the last 10 years, the money that we spend each year on Medicare has gone from $8 billion to $20 billion. We have an ageing population. By 2050 7½ thousand Australians a week will be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's, and I want to make sure—

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

The member for Sydney will desist.

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

that our health system is designed—

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

The member for Sydney has been warned.

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

so that we can take care of those people. I want to make sure that we can listen to the independent advice that was provided to Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard, when both those prime ministers commissioned independent reports into the health system. In both of those reports, Christine Bennett and Simon Keenan came back to Labor and said that the current health system is not sustainable. Bob Hawke knew it was not sustainable back in 1991, when he introduced the co-payment and we know that for 50 years Labor has supported a co-payment in the medicine scheme to make it is sustainable for our population.

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

The horse is dead; stop flogging it.

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

The member for Moreton will remove himself under 94 (a).

The member for Moreton then left the chamber.

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

We are absolutely determined in this budget to introduce a modest co-payment of $7.—

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

And those on my right will desist.

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

If people cannot afford the $7, doctors still have the discretion to bulk-bill patients. Patients are bulk-billed by doctors by discretion and from 1 July next year doctors will have the same discretion to bulk-bill patients. Of the $7, $5 goes into a $20 billion medical research fund so that we can help meet all of those health needs into the coming decades; and the remaining $2 goes back to the doctors. A total of $468 million will help doctors to continue to bulk-bill and it will be in addition to the money that they receive under Medicare now. It is an incredibly important measure to make Medicare sustainable.

Labor has not uttered one word about how they intend to listen to the advice that Prime Minister Rudd received to make Medicare sustainable. They are talking about $16 billion more for foreign aid; they are talking about putting more money into the union movement; they are talking about putting more money into education, health and everything else. But they will not tell Australians how they will pay for it. I noticed overnight in the United Kingdom, in the Times, a call for patients to pay $10 to see a GP. I think it is a very important discussion. In that discussion they are saying they want to introduce a co-payment because there is a £30 billion gap in the UK's NHS over the course of the next 10 years.

We want to make our system sustainable, and we need to hear from the Labor Party how they will support, not oppose, that measure. They need to get out of the way.