Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, your chaos and dysfunction, Senator Abetz. We have seen it now since the budget last year. We saw the government introduce a $7 tax which was toxic. There was no discussion, there was no consultation and it was introduced without any discussion with the medical profession or other groups that were expected to introduce it. Then we saw a backflip in December. We saw the $7 dumped and replaced with a $5 discretionary fee—'to recover income' was the mantra for that. We then saw the $20 tax introduction. But the government said it would continue to stick with its plan to reduce the Medicare rebate that GPs receive for common consultations by $5 from 1 July. So the government is still heading on with this plan to attack the principal primary healthcare funding.

What happened with the $5 was the government gave the doctors a choice—very generous of them. The doctors could either pass the $5 on or they could bill their patients. Now, here we are at the 11th hour when the government knows that it is not a popular policy so they are making another announcement that they are not pursuing it. However, as Senator McLucas has just indicated, the government said that it does remain good policy. If that is what they are saying, what are they going to come up with next? They will push ahead with the planned freeze on indexation for Medicare rebates to 2018.

So what is next? Mr Hockey has been reported as saying the government listened to the medical community and is going to continue to work closely with the medical community. The Rural Doctors Association of Australia has certainly welcomed this latest backflip by the government. But it is also saying that it has major concerns about the government's current commitment to maintain the freeze on the indexation of Medicare rebates paid to patients. So what the RDAA is saying is that this big freeze has the potential to increase costs for patients to a greater extent than the proposed co-payment, with the resultant restriction and difficulties in accessing primary care services. So here we are again with a policy that is designed to attack the primary level of health care. The primary purpose for people to go to the doctor is to try and get their health in order before it gets to a stage when they are really sick. So it is a pity that the government had not bothered to listen before putting of these ill-thought-through policies out into the community.

When the government introduced the $7 co-payment and then dropped it back to the $20 tax and then took it to the $5 payment, I bothered to go out and talk to the doctors. I did a survey amongst all the doctors on the north-west coast and on the west coast of Tasmania. The result was astounding. Close to three-quarters of north coast and west coast doctors believed that bulk-billing would decrease or end completely. The north-west coast and the west coast of Tasmania, as Senator Abetz would know, are home to some of the poorest communities in the country, with 85 per cent of doctors actually bulk-billing. People who live in these areas are very vulnerable to health care costs and hikes.

Labor knows that the government GP tax is bad policy but I wanted to learn exactly what the impact would be from my community and from the GPs who serve in my community. They were the statistics that came back. Some of the doctors told me that the government changes were not only cruel and unfair but were economically reckless because of the attack on the primary health care. Some of the other doctors said that this was a blatant attack on Medicare that makes no financial sense. From the doctors that treat the patients in my area in Tasmania, there is no economic sense to introduce these policies.

Doctors tell me—not me reading it or making it up—that evidence tells us that primary health care is the most efficient part of the system and that when it works properly it stops people ending up in hospital where the burden on the budgetary constraints is far greater. So it is ill thought out, it is ill conceived, it is reckless and it is chaotic.