Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 22 January this year, the Prime Minister said, 'Why isn't it fair enough to have a modest co-payment for Medicare?' Then, last month, he said, 'I don't have a problem with co-payments.' Indeed, on 53 separate occasions the Prime Minister has either defended or advocated a Medicare co-payment. He has done so for over a year. As my colleagues have already pointed out, we have already had three different proposals put in respect of a Medicare co-payment: first there was the $7 co-payment, then a $20 cut to GPs and then a $5 co-payment. None of them got up, because the public are not fools and they will not wear them.

Regardless of what the Prime Minister says today, the Prime Minister is committed to a co-payment. He wants a co-payment, and the issue will not go away under a coalition government. The Prime Minister simply cannot be trusted. Medicare will only ever be safe under a Labor government. The government has spent the last 18 months at war with doctors, at war with patients and at war with Medicare. It has had 18 months in which its only health policy has been to destroy Medicare. Today's announcement is nothing more than a diversion to safeguard the Prime Minister's leadership.