Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget is an assault on rural and regional Australia, and there is no better demonstration of this than the GP tax—a $7 tax every time you enter the doctor's waiting room, every time you get a blood test, every time you get a scan. It affects rural and regional communities in a far more pertinent and vicious way. Mr Gordon Gregory, the executive director of the National Rural Health Alliance, said:

… we anticipate that a $7 co-payment will present a dilemma, especially for lone GPs in small rural and remote towns, and that the viability of these medical practices may be reduced, with consequences for access to health services in those towns.

Those opposite are putting at risk every lone GP in a country town. I can tell you from my electorate that often all of the health services revolve around that GP. If you lose a GP you lose a local hospital and a local aged-care facility. You lose all those important jobs and services that are based around having a GP in a town. And you get people leaving that town because of that. A GP is the lifeblood of a rural community. Those opposite, with their $7 cascading GP tax—their tax on blood tests, their tax on scans—are putting it all at risk. (Time expired)