Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A great hospital and a great service. She made a phone call and within 15 minutes on a busy Tuesday night she was seeing a GP. These are services that are at risk if the coalition break their commitments around healthcare funding that this bill goes to. Unfortunately, the cuts that we are already seeing directly contradict the Prime Minister's pre-election commitment. This is a clear example yet again of the government saying one thing in opposition and doing exactly the opposite in government.

It should come as no surprise to people who have seen the coalition government's performance in health in other areas. They are a party that opposed Medibank when Prime Minister Whitlam introduced it. They are a party that opposed Medicare when the Hawke-Keating government reintroduced it. In fact, as recently as 1993 they took to an election the position of abolishing Medicare. We have also seen very recently state Liberal governments taking the axe to health care. For example, the O'Farrell Liberal government in New South Wales has cut almost $3 billion in health funding, decimating health services across New South Wales. This is the standard practice of the Liberal government and I am fearful as to what will happen out of the government's commission of audit.

I will comment on the O'Farrell government a bit longer. This is a government that has cut health to the bone. Even when it made commitments to fund hospitals appropriately, it failed. My wife is an anaesthetic nurse and they fought very hard to get improved patient-to-nurse ratios in their hospitals. Even when they won that through the industrial award process, the government has still been incredibly tardy in actually delivering on that commitment. I fear that this could be replicated in the federal Liberal government's approach to health care.

I would like to note that the Minister for Health has failed to guarantee that cuts will not be made to Medicare Locals, cancer centres or medical research, and it is apparent that some cuts to the PBS are now also being considered. As well as these initial cuts, it has also been revealed that hundreds of Department of Health staff have been relocated to a 'business service centre' as of 1 December while they wait for projects to be identified as priorities by the Minister for Health. This is a complete waste of resources and is of great concern.

This government's commitment to health care can also be seriously questioned on the basis that the fundamentally important areas of mental health and science no longer have dedicated ministers. I applaud the efforts of previous ministers for mental health, such as the member for Port Adelaide, who did sterling work in the last government.

In my own area of the Hunter region, health care and funding for hospitals is of vital importance. The John Hunter Hospital, which is the only trauma hospital between Sydney and Brisbane, is located in my electorate. Hunter New England Health is the largest employer in the area and Labor invested nearly $50 million in the Hunter Medical Research Institute, which is doing great work in the Hunter area—teaming up with John Hunter Hospital and the University of Newcastle. In Charlton, Labor invested $2½ million in clinical skills training at the John Hunter Hospital, as well as $2.5 million in the GP superclinic at Morisset—which, despite the campaign being run by the Minister for Health, has been open for many years and is doing great work down in the Morisset-Southlakes area. In fact I am told that the GP superclinic down there sees more patients per day than the emergency department of Wyong Hospital, which is a quite significant nearby hospital. There was also $850,000 in funding provided for primary care infrastructure for GPs.

However, there remain significant health challenges in the Hunter. A recent National Health Performance Authority report revealed that 70 per cent of adults in the Hunter region are now overweight or obese—the second highest rate in New South Wales. A recent report by the Hunter Valley Research Foundation indicates that 44 per cent of Hunter residents have a medical condition, disease, impairment or disability that has been diagnosed by a doctor or health professional and has lasted for more than six months.

So reforms to the PBS, as embodied in this bill, are very important. What is vital is that the savings which accrue from this change are reinvested in the health portfolio, because areas like the Hunter Valley desperately need additional health funding. In Charlton alone, there are nearly 8,000 people with diabetes. According to Diabetes Australia, there are an estimated 14,000 people with prediabetes and at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next 5 years. The electorate of Charlton has a combination of a significant population over the age of 60 and new residential areas that will see an increase in young families. All of these areas and all of these people are vulnerable to any cuts in health funding. That is why it is vital that the savings from the measures in this bill are reinvested in health.

I am proud to be a Labor member of parliament. We are the party of Medicare, we are the party of Medicare Locals and we are the party of the PBS. I am really proud of our record in government and I am really committed, along with the rest of the Hunter team and the rest of the Labor team, to hold the government to account over the reinvestment of the savings associated with this bill. I commend the bill to the House along with the amendment we have moved. It is just so important that we keep fighting for adequate health funding.

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