Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

You started the answer, Minister, talking about ADF health, so let us talk about ADF health—I think it is great—because the 2012-13 budget delayed the rollout of the ADF free family healthcare program by a further 12 months. That is the 2012-13 budget, the current budget, which delayed it by 12 months in order to save 50 million bucks. Taking into account this delay—which is not the first, I might add—what we currently have now bears no resemblance to what was promised by the Labor government in 2007. The program was due to begin on 1 July this year. The 2012-13 budget papers even made special mention and called it a saving. The government is going to save $50 million by taking free family health care from ADF dependants.

This year's budget papers make absolutely no mention of the program at all—a signature program, Minister, from the election of the mighty Labor government in 2007, and there is no mention of it. But—surprise, surprise—a small note appeared a week or so ago on the Defence website which simply states that the program has been delayed once more, now beginning on 1 January 2014. Minister, I must have missed your press release, and I apologise that I did not receive that, or I must have missed it in the budget, but I picked it up on that small note on the website: another six-month delay after the election. The trial program has now been running for over four years. That simply has to be some sort of record in terms of a trial program for the ADF free family health care.

Minister, given the repeated failure of the government to implement the full program as your government promised to do—and there is a danger of creating two classes of ADF dependants, those with access and those without—can you guarantee that this program, delayed many, many times, will actually start on 1 January 2014, and what is the cost of the program?

See this speech in context