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

The member for Gellibrand will have her curiosity satisfied, believe me. What will not be satisfied is the curiosity the Australian people have about what actual policy Labor has in the health area.

We all know that since 1996 this government has delivered enormous economic benefits to the people of Australia. Real wages have gone up by 20 per cent and real net wealth per head has increased by 100 per cent, and one of the reasons we have seen these outstanding economic results is that the Howard government has invested in an ever-improving health system. When members opposite were last in government, just 15 per cent of federal government spending was on Health and Ageing portfolio programs. Today it is over 20 per cent and there will be more, let me assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, in tonight’s budget.

As the American National Bureau of Economic Research pointed out, each year, improvement in a population’s life expectancy contributes to a four per cent increase in national output. It is no wonder that GDP is up, that wages are up and that real wealth is up, because since 1996 alone there has been a two-year increase in life expectancy for females and a three-year increase in life expectancy for males. That is due to the policy of the Howard government. If you listened to the member for Gellibrand, you would think that we have no interest in delivering better services and no interest in tackling chronic diseases; that all we are interested in is trying to rip off the states. What a contemptible and silly assertion from the member for Gellibrand. She says we have no interest in tackling chronic disease. Let me tell her that, thanks in part—not completely but in part—to policies of the Howard government, smoking, one of the most serious preventable causes of ill health, has decreased from 24 per cent in 1995 to 17 per cent in 2004. She says we have done nothing about cardiovascular disease. Let me tell her that in 1995 there were 53,407 deaths from cardiovascular disease. In 2005 there were 46,134 deaths from cardiovascular disease. If she stood up and said that the government could do more, that the government could do better or that this was good but it was not good enough, she would have some credibility, but this ridiculous idea that we have never thought of trying to reduce cardiovascular disease, that we are not interested in people dying of cardiovascular disease, is unworthy of a serious member of parliament because it is so obviously and self-evidently wrong.

In 1996 there were 61 deaths from breast cancer per 100,000 women. In 2004, that figure of 61 had dropped to 51. I am not claiming sole credit for the Howard government, but it did not happen entirely by accident; it happened because this government does take preventative health seriously and we do fund screening programs. In 1996 there were three deaths per 100,000 women from cervical cancer. In 2004 there were just 1.8 deaths. I deeply regret that the death rate is as high as that, but this improvement in the death rate did not happen by accident and it did not happen because God ordained a fall in the death rate; it happened because of better treatments, more screening and better awareness, and the federal government had a hand in all these things. As I said, all these improvements—the improvement in life expectancy, the fall in cardiovascular deaths and the fall in cancer deaths—did not happen by accident; they happened in part because of federal government policies.

On immunisation—and I do not want to sound like I am practising the blame game—heaven forbid that anyone should point out that the former government spent just $13 million on vaccines. Heaven forbid that anyone should say that the current government is actually interested simply because we spend some $200 million, almost $300 million, per year on vaccines! But we do, and that is one reason death rates have fallen. We have boosted screening programs and we are in the process of introducing a bowel-screening program, not because we are just a bunch of heartless, hard-hearted politicians shifting the blame wherever we can but because we care and because we want to do what is practical and reasonable to help deliver better outcomes to the Australian people.

There is constant reiteration from the member for Gellibrand that we do not have any policies, that we do not care and that we spend only something like two per cent of the health budget on screening or prevention. I ask her to tell me what her predecessors did which was significantly better than what we are doing. Why didn’t members opposite spend more on immunisation? Why didn’t members opposite think of a bowel-screening program?

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