Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I heard Senator McLucas say 'What a shame,' and I say what a shame it is for the Australian people that we had to sit through that empty rhetoric from Senator McLucas. This is a shadow minister, apparently, who has got a long history in this place and on medical issues, and the best that the shadow minister could do was launch an appeal to authority, one individual who has an opinion, and refer to them and say, 'That must be the definitive outcome.'

It is a flawed logic, because there is none of the detail that is necessary in order to put forward a policy. We know where Senator McLucas has done her research: it is in the media. That is where all good research is done by the opposition, apparently. They cannot think for themselves. They cannot draw the conclusion that they supported a Medicare co-payment in a previous incarnation of the Labor government and now they do not. Like all snake-oil salesmen, those who peddle miraculous cures as they tour around the country, they say, 'Trust us. We'll give you the solution to your problems.' But, like all snake-oil salesmen, they are peddling falsehoods, they are peddling fraud.

A great example of that was when Senator McLucas said, 'If you go to the doctor now, you're not going to be able to be bulk-billed.' What a crock! What an absolute load of codswallop, because there have been no changes to the Medicare payment, no changes to Medicare, that have passed through this chamber, so there is no way that there is any change to the current system. But Senator McLucas, for the benefit of the cameras and the Australian people, hammed it up and peddled her alarmist falsehoods and snake oil—the balm that is going to cure everything—in this chamber.

If someone is prepared to peddle that sort of nonsense, the sort of nonsense that they use to cover up their six years of dysfunctional and hopeless government—the deception of the Australian people—and if they are prepared to do it now in opposition, they are simply not worthy of being considered as an alternative government.

Let me remind you, Mr Deputy President, that serious measures need to be taken to redress a structural imbalance. The structural imbalance in the budget is the fact that the Labor Party ran up about $300 billion worth of debt in six years. They had us on course to have $667 billion worth of debt had they been re-elected. What do we have to show for it? We have nothing.