John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The minister for education says, ‘That’s right.’ She confirms that Labor is against the safety net. The safety net has been a life raft to Middle Australian families because it means that, if you have an unexpected accident—if one of your children has a broken limb, you have to take them to consultations and you incur expenses over and above the normal—once you hit a very modest level of a few hundred dollars, you get back 80 per cent of everything you have had to outlay on that injury. Labor wants to abolish that. I cannot think of anything that would hurt the constituents of Fairfax more than the abolition of the safety net. Talking about the blame game: to abolish the safety net is to blame the patient for getting injured, and that basically is what Labor is all about. I suggest that, before the Leader of the Opposition asks further questions about health, he does a speed-reading course of his own party’s policy.

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