Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I start my contribution by acknowledging the interjection made by the member for Bowman during the previous speech when he indicated that the Regional Partnerships program was flawed. That is something that we on this side of the parliament are very aware of. I also note at the commencement of my contribution to this debate that there have been no speakers from the opposition side on this legislation. When they were in government they had total disrespect for people in the area of health. They did not have a clue when it came to health and they let the bulk-billing rate decline to an extent that was unforgivable. None of them have any idea or any commitment and none of them are prepared to stand up for people in their electorates on a piece of legislation such as this. The Health Insurance Amendment (90 Day Pay Doctor Cheque Scheme) Bill 2008 is good news for everyone in their electorates because it allows medical specialists and consultant physicians access to the 90 Day Pay Doctor Cheque Scheme, provided the original claim for the Medicare benefit is submitted electronically to Medicare Australia.

The 90 Day Pay Doctor Cheque Scheme has worked very well for GPs. If a patient does not submit the cheque within a 90-day period then that cheque is cancelled and the doctor is paid electronically. This legislation will encourage more specialists to use the 90 Day Pay Doctor Cheque Scheme. It will encourage more specialists and physicians to use electronic processing of payments for their patients, and I think this is very important.

The Shortland electorate has a very elderly population—in fact, it is the tenth ‘oldest’ electorate in Australia. We do have a doctor shortage. We do have GPs that tend not to bulk-bill. The people of the Shortland electorate will benefit from a GP superclinic, to be built in the northern part of the Wyong shire, as they will be able to access doctors, and hopefully those doctors will bulk-bill. The people of the Shortland electorate will be able to access a Medicare office at Belmont when it becomes operational. This will enable more people to have their consultation fees processed electronically, which will put less of a financial burden on them—a financial burden that escalated when the previous government was in power.

I will use the remaining time available to me to go through some of the so-called achievements of the Howard government when it came to health. We had a Prime Minister that was totally opposed to Medicare, and I think that he used every opportunity to undermine Medicare. He went to the electorate and said there was a rolled gold commitment to ensure that Medicare and bulk-billing continued, yet we saw an incredible decline in bulk-billing and we saw a government that tended to invest in private health rather than invest in Medicare, the universal healthcare system that all Australians can access.

I did mention that we in the Shortland electorate have been left with rather a problem as a result of the Howard government. We have had a massive decline in the number of GPs working in the electorate. There is a concentration at one end of the electorate that actually makes the figures coming in look not too bad: there is about one GP to about 1,700 or 1,800 residents, which could be a lot worse. I see the member for Parkes sitting opposite. I know that in his electorate there would be a shortage of GPs, and his electorate’s patient-to-doctor ratio may be even worse than that which exists within Shortland. I think that it is very important that the Committee remember how those members on the other side sat on their hands and allowed the previous government to totally undermine our health system. What that did was put people at real risk.

One area of my electorate actually lost a GP. It is an area with a lot of very elderly people in it, and they were without a doctor—totally without a doctor. But I know that the current health minister, the Minister for Health and Ageing, has put her mind to resolving the issues to do with the shortage of GPs. Extending the pay doctor scheme to specialists and physicians will greatly benefit those elderly people that live within the electorate of Shortland. I praise the initiative that the minister and the Rudd government have shown in extending this scheme, along with the initiative of the GP superclinics and all the other wonderful health initiatives that have been introduced even as early into the term as we are at the moment—so I congratulate the minister and the government. I think this gives financial security to both physicians and specialists and I say that extending the 90 Day Pay Doctor Cheque Scheme to the specialists and physicians is an outstanding initiative, one that should be endorsed.

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