Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the first interim report of the Senate Select Committee on Health. Firstly, let me state how truly grateful I am to the health professionals, nurses, ambos, diabetes advocates, doctors, health administrators and the other brave citizens who came before our committee to give evidence about the Abbott government's attempts to destroy Australia's health system. We heard damning evidence about the government's failure to consult the sector prior to breaking its promises and revealing its real plans around a GP tax in the federal budget in May.

Tony Abbott promised before the election that there would be no cuts to health, but we all know what an untruth that was. Indeed, the budget revealed $60 billion in cuts. What this committee has revealed is that the combination of a $7 co-payment on GP visits, on pathology and on diagnostic imaging and on the other associated cuts that go alongside those co-payments equate to much more than a cut. They are better described as machete blows to the entire sector, devised to bring about the death of Medicare. In the preparation that was undertaken by the government for this attack on Medicare through the attack on GP co-payments, the AMA have made it very clear that they were amongst the illustrious groups in this country that were ignored. There was a complete failure of consultation at any stage prior to the budget. The AMA actually put on the record:

The AMA is concerned that the Government’s Budget measures therefore appear to ignore systemic opportunities to address health care spending. They appear to be driven by ideology rather than based on evidence and have not been developed within a vision and framework of systemic reform.

The agencies that we did get to come before our committee were able to declare to us that none of them were consulted before the government set out wholesale to attack the very fabric of access to health care for every Australian.

The list of those who were not consulted: the Australian Medical Association in Tasmania; the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners; the Royal Australasian College of Physicians; the Premier of South Australia, who gave evidence indicating he was not consulted—indeed, health departments right across the entire nation were not consulted, to the best of our knowledge, by this government; the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, not consulted; the Australia Diagnostic Imaging Association, not consulted; key peak bodies from residential aged care; ambulance services; the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Foundation in South Australia; the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia; and the Health Consumers Alliance of South Australia. They are some of the groups who put on the record at our 15 hearings across the country that they were not consulted. It is hard to believe that a government would make an announcement on the evening of the budget that will affect every single one of those groups and indeed the health of every single Australian, and not make an effort to consult the sector.

The committee found widespread, consistent criticism of the $7 co-payment—a co-payment to be applied to visits to GPs, a co-payment to be applied to any pathology and a co-payment to be applied to any diagnostic imaging. Sadly, the committee found another example of the ideology of this government in applying a disproportionate disadvantage on the health and life opportunities of the most vulnerable sections of the Australian community, especially Indigenous Australians. The committee found across the entire inquiry and through our report a litany of evidence from person after person, explaining the devastating impacts that will arise if this set of policy initiatives from the government, falsely labelled as reforms, go ahead.

What we have in this report is a documentation of damning evidence of a government that believes it is above consultation, that is determined to destroy Medicare, that is determined to damage the health of every Australian, to take people away from affordable and sustainable access to GPs that we know underpins the health of this nation and drive people in ill-health to emergency departments right across this nation—estimated at an additional 500,000 presentations at emergency departments in New South Wales and 290,000 in South Australia. The policies that we are seeing from this government are a disgrace. This report documents for once and all the devastation that will be wrought on the Australian people if its plans to implement a co-payment go ahead.

There are a number of other very significant recommendations in the report and I seek leave to continue my remarks on this at a later opportunity. I understand the time is limited this afternoon.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.