Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It will be interesting to see if the Minister for Health and Ageing can actually do anything that is related to his portfolio when we have this debate today about the Howard government’s rising health costs. We have seen what his favourite behaviour is in this House—that is, to talk about everything other than health. The only thing that he thinks he is an expert in is anything that is related to attacking the Leader of the Opposition or something else causing trouble. He is usually actually attacking you, Mr Speaker.

Today I want to talk about what has happened under his stewardship of this portfolio; how Australian families, mums and dads, are facing spiralling health costs every day because of his government’s policies. I have to tell members on this side of the House that when I first took on this portfolio and had the surprise of seeing the minister running around inside the halls of the parliament in his sporting gear, I thought he was actually doing his exercise. What I have found out since, having followed what he does in the portfolio more closely, is that he is actually practising his parliamentary strategy—that is, to run away from any health issue that is ever raised.

We ask him about reform that is needed in the health portfolio: off he runs. We ask him about the costs that parents are paying when they go to the doctor—an increase of 100 per cent in out-of-pocket expenses since this government was elected—and the minister runs away. We ask him about chronic disease and he stands up in this parliament and ridicules chronic disease, and then he runs away. He does not believe that he should take any responsibility for the growing crises in the health portfolio.

We cannot afford in this nation to have a health minister who is tired of the job. We cannot afford to have a minister who is bored with the job. We cannot afford to have a minister who has stopped listening to stakeholders’ concerns and does not care about the deep problems in the health system. On this side of the House, we do not ever want parents to have to say, ‘Can I afford to take my kids to the doctor?’ We do not want parents making decisions about the health care of their children because they cannot afford to properly protect them.

Look at the rotavirus vaccine. Rotavirus gastroenteritis is a preventable disease that strikes young children. It is a dreadful disease; they can get sick and dehydrated very quickly. Many thousands of children end up in hospital with this disease every year. In fact, 27 children a day have to go to hospital with rotavirus, and the minister could stop that immediately. PBAC has already recommended that this vaccine should be approved, but cabinet is just sitting on its hands. The minister is not pursuing this, and every day individual mums and dads have to make the decision about whether they can afford a $200 or $300 vaccine because this minister cannot be bothered to push for their interests.

I hope the minister is going to tell us when he will approve this vaccine. We cannot afford to go through another winter, which is when this virus peaks. It is expected that 10,000 children will be hospitalised this year. We have parents looking to the government, saying: ‘How can you help us? How can you protect our children from this disease? What if we don’t have the $200 or $300 to get this vaccine?’ The minister has the power to fix this, and instead he is doing nothing or, as I said at the start, just running away from an issue that affects every family every single day. He spends all his time looking at what sorts of silly stunts he can run in question time instead of thinking seriously about our health policy.

What about dental care? We have thousands of children going to hospital for preventable dental illnesses because this government has completely washed its hands of dental care. This takes us to the other favourite strategy the minister has in his portfolio: if he is not running away from something, he is standing still and blaming somebody else. But when do we actually see him fixing anything? With dental care, this is the classic situation: he jumps up and down and says, ‘This is the states’ responsibility.’ He avoids the fact that there was a Commonwealth dental scheme. He avoids the fact that it is even in the Constitution that the Commonwealth has a role to play in dental services. He avoids the fact that the government has a role to play in providing dental services for veterans. Instead, the minister is happy to have hundreds of thousands of people, including many children, on waiting lists around the country not being able to get the dental care they need, and 50,000 people each year going to hospital with preventable dental conditions because this minister says he is not going to fix it.

We cannot afford to have a health minister who is going to approach the portfolio in this way. We cannot afford to have a health minister who says: ‘It’s okay. We expect working families to be able to find all that money to look after their kids’ teeth. We expect them to be able to find the money to pay for the rotavirus vaccine. We expect them to find the money for a 100 per cent out-of-pocket increase in doctor’s expenses and we expect them to be able to find the money, if they have private health insurance, for a 46 per cent increase.’

The government introduced the changes to the private health insurance rebate—a policy that we supported—but they made the promise when they introduced this rebate that it would keep premiums down. And what do we see? A whopping 46 per cent increase in the cost of private health insurance. Working families are hit in all directions when it comes to healthcare costs: they are hit with increased private health insurance expenses; they are hit with extra costs for dental; they are hit with extra out-of-pocket expenses for doctors and the list just goes on.

We now have the Medicare surcharge levy, also part of the government’s reforms when they introduced the private health insurance rebate. It was said by the minister at the time, the minister’s predecessor—I think his predecessor by two—that this was going to be a tax on the wealthy. They were only going to be charging this levy to the wealthy who chose not to be privately insured. We now have 350,000-plus people who are earning below the average wage and getting whacked with this levy. How is that fair for working families? How are they supposed to find in their budget these extra healthcare expenses when the cost of living is getting tighter for them every day?

I do not want to live in a country—and I am sure there is no-one on this side of the House, Minister, who does—where people cannot afford the health care they need, when they have to make a choice about whether they go to the doctor’s with their sick children because they have to look in their wallets first to see if they have enough money to go, rather than doing what is in the interests of the kids.

The minister can stand up here every day and say, as he often does about health: ‘This is all the states’ fault. If there is any problem in the hospital system, it is all the states’ fault, Minister, you cannot keep saying that it is all the states’ fault when you are neglecting your duties, when you are neglecting paying attention to preventable diseases that would keep people out of hospital. You cannot keep doing that.

The minister had the cheek earlier this week to stand up in the parliament and ridicule the idea of paying more attention to chronic disease. He ridiculed the idea that we might be worried about this tsunami of chronic disease that we have to face. But, for his government, less than two per cent—I think it is 1.7 per cent—of national health expenditure is on prevention measures.

Do you know why the minister really does not care about prevention? Probably because he has no sympathy for those who are suffering from diabetes, cardiovascular disease or other conditions. He does not worry about them. The minister is not worried for one second about the people who are suffering, because he is just rubbing his hands together and saying, ‘They will end up in state hospitals and I will stand up in the parliament and blame them.’ That is not the way for a health minister to run his portfolio. We need a health minister who is prepared to be interested in health—not someone who just stands up here enjoying the toing and froing of parliament, attacking the Leader of the Opposition when he feels like it or coming out with some silly stunt. Families in this country want a health minister who is interested in administering the health portfolio. They want a health minister who is worried about the costs of health care. They want a minister who understands what a heartbreaking decision it is to say, ‘Can we afford $200 or $300 for a vaccine’—a vaccine that has been approved by your advisory committee—‘or do we take the risk and hope that our child does not get sick?’

I am sure the minister has been to plenty of hospitals and visited plenty of emergency departments. I am sure he has seen children suffering from rotavirus gastroenteritis; it is not a happy thing. No-one wants their small children to be in that situation. We know that there are some diseases we cannot stop. We know that there will be times when children will get sick and we cannot do anything about it. But in this instance there is a clear, preventative action that this government can take—that the Howard government is responsible for taking—but that the minister refuses to take. The PBAC recommended it in November; we are now in March. You cannot wait any longer, Minister. If you keep waiting, we are going to have another 10,000 children in hospital this year who do not need to be. They are calling on you to take action.

The minister has been happy to stand up here being dismissive about the growing threat of chronic disease. I know that many people on this side of the House have been campaigning in their electorates with the growing number of stakeholders who are concerned about how we deal with diabetes, mental illness and cardiovascular disease, but we have the minister standing up here saying: ‘Actually, the government has taken some initiatives. We are spending $200 million on some Medicare initiatives.’ Minister, those initiatives are fine, but overall we still have the government spending a tiny portion of its money on chronic disease—on the illnesses that are responsible for more than 70 per cent of deaths in this country. We need to make sure that the minister is prepared to look again at the priorities of the government. We want him to have some reformist agenda.

I have been at a number of conferences with the minister recently where he has proudly stood up and said that he is anti-reform, and he has used the motto of the medical profession, which is ‘Do no harm’. There is not a doctor in this country who would stand by if their patient was at risk, Minister. If your portfolio is at risk because you are not looking at the things that are causing and presenting challenges for the future, then you are not doing no harm. Taking no action will actually cause some harm.

Even the Productivity Commission this week, when they released their report on the national reform agenda, made it completely clear that this is not just the minister ignoring health imperatives and the pressures that they are going to put on families every day; the minister is also ignoring important national imperatives. He is a minister in a government that prides itself on having a great economic record, but we have the national reform agenda, the Productivity Commission’s report, saying, ‘If we do not take action on preventable disease and chronic disease, we are giving up an opportunity to improve our gross domestic product by six per cent.’ That is a huge increase. In fact, the Treasurer actually spoke about that today. He obviously has not highlighted the health section of that for your attention. It says we must take some action, or else the productivity of this nation will be affected. People cannot be full, participating members of the community if they are suffering and losing many days and years of work through chronic disease. You have to be prepared to tackle this, Minister, or you are not doing your job as the health minister.

Look at the way working families are being put under pressure every day with the spiralling costs of health care. We have heard, through questions from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that many women are being put under pressure when they are working under Australian workplace agreements and getting paid less than they would be if they were working under collective agreements or certified agreements. We have people being squeezed in all directions. They are earning less because of the government’s policies. They are being charged more because of the government’s policies. I know that the member for Jagajaga has been pursuing the spiralling costs of child care. That is another way that working families are getting hit because of the government’s policies. We cannot afford to have health be yet another one of those things that are hitting working families in their hip pockets. We all have people who come into our offices to raise concerns about not being able to afford pharmaceuticals or not being able to afford to go to the doctor. We know that they turn up in our hospital system. It is not adequate for the minister to say, ‘That’s okay. I’ll just run away or blame somebody else for it.’ Minister, you have a lot of the levers in your hands. You can actually help fix these problems. Working families in this country expect the health minister to do so.

We want some answers about how you are going to help keep premiums down for private health insurance. This is what the government promised when they introduced their initiatives. In fact, the minister had the cheek, when the increases were announced last week—4.5 per cent on average—to say that these were really good figures. Since when is a 4.5 per cent increase, which is anything from $50 to several hundred dollars, depending on the type of product you have, good news for a working family when they have to add that into their budget? They are not getting anything extra for it. It is the same policy they have had year after year, and now they have another 4.5 per cent to bring it up to 46 per cent. Minister, what are you going to do about that? Why are you taking out of the law of this country that the government should play a role in minimising premiums? Why are you running away from that? We know what the answer is. Minister Wooldridge’s promise that premiums would be kept under control has already been broken, and now you are taking it out of the law to make sure that nobody can try to hold you to account for your failings.

Working families cannot afford to have this health minister in the portfolio any longer. They need a minister who is actually interested in fixing their problems. They need a minister who is not going to run away, spending his time jogging around the parliament and working out the smart lines he wants to use against the Leader of the Opposition. We want him interested in the health of Australian families and we want to know what he is going to do to take some of the pressure off the cost of living for working families. (Time expired)

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