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

Over the last six months we have seen this Prime Minister and this government start to dismantle our universal healthcare system as we know it. The Abbott government wants to slug families, pensioners and patients with a $7 GP tax every time they visit the doctor, get a blood test or get an X-ray. They have ripped $50 billion out of our public hospital system, and they want to increase the costs of medicines, and they are telling state governments that they should charge you a tax every time you go to visit the emergency department. The government is intent on creating a two-tiered healthcare system in this country, an American-style healthcare system where your credit card is more important than your healthcare card. These lazy policies hurt middle- and low-income earners, and they hurt the most vulnerable in our society.

Members on this side of the House have been speaking to our electorates right across the country about the importance of Medicare.    In my own electorate, people are rightly worried about what these changes will mean to them if they get sick. Nearly 67,000 Australians have signed our Save Medicare petition, voicing their concerns at this attack on the universal health care system. They want to tell the Prime Minister that he cannot get away with imposing an unfair $7 GP tax every time people visit a doctor. Australians want the Prime Minister to know that gutting our public hospitals of $50 billion means an increase in elective surgery and emergency department waiting times. I seek leave to table a document that represents the 67,000 people who have signed our Medicare petition— (Time expired)

Leave granted.