Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

At 71.9 per cent, the bulk-billing rate in country areas is at an all-time high. I am pleased to say to the interjecting member for Brisbane that the bulk-billing rate has increased in every state and territory over the last two years but most of all in Tasmania, where the bulk-billing rate is up 22.6 percentage points since December 2003. Results like these mean that Medicare is safe with the Howard government. They mean that the Howard government is the best friend that Medicare has ever had.

I was asked about alternative policies. On the weekend, we had the Leader of the Opposition boasting about the big job he once had as director-general of the cabinet office in Queensland. He said:

At that level, you provide a lot of advice on key questions which go to the very core of what governments do—with schools policy, with hospitals policy and the rest.

I was very interested in that, because in 1995—after the Leader of the Opposition had been running Queensland for six years, he thinks—a survey showed that 61 per cent of Queenslanders said their hospital system was in crisis. Six years of Kevin Rudd and 61 per cent of Queenslanders think their public hospital system is in crisis. Well, there is a clear message in all of this: don’t let Kevin Rudd do to Medicare what he did to Queensland’s public hospitals.

See this speech in context