Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is obvious that Labor still remain within some sort of parallel universe, denying the fact that they thrust our country into an enormous amount of debt. They are denying the fact that they are putting this country on a path to an unsustainable health system.

As usual, as history shows, Liberal governments are elected to clean up Labor messes, and clean them up we will. We will tidy up the economy because we cannot continue to borrow $1 billion a month just to pay the interest bill. We cannot continue to provide 263 million free services a year under Medicare for a population of 23 million people. It is absolutely essential that we provide support to those people who cannot provide for themselves, and in this budget we do that. It is absolutely essential that we address Labor's waste and inefficiency.

I saw former Minister Plibersek in the chamber before. She presided over the greatest wasteful spending in the health portfolio since Federation, spending money on programs like the GP Super Clinics, half of which remain as vacant paddocks, many of which just have not been able to deliver even the most basic of health services. If people knew anything about the Rudd and Gillard years, they knew that they were big on ideas but completely and utterly hopeless at management and implementing reforms and changes that were needed.

This is what we face when it comes to the health portfolio in this country. In the Medicare levy, we raise less than $10 billion a year, yet the Commonwealth spends $65 billion a year. We project over every year of the forward estimates and into the out years that health spending will grow. It will grow in public hospitals. It will grow in Medicare. It will grow in the overall expenditure within this portfolio. But it will grow at a sustainable rate.

Public hospital funding was not sustainable. If people just cast their minds back—and they are having a bit of a glimpse back to the Rudd days at the moment—to the period in which Julia Gillard was elected as Prime Minister by the Labor caucus, former Prime Minister Gillard came into office saying that she would fix up the boats disaster that Rudd had presided over, that she would fix up the climate change problem that Labor had created and that she would fix up the healthcare agreement that Kevin Rudd had spoken about since 2007 but was never able to put to bed. What happened was that, in an act of desperation that we saw quite regularly in the Gillard years, there was a heap of money put on the table—and I mean a heap of money.

The previous Labor government knew how to waste money. They put a heap of money on the table, and they signed the state premiers and health ministers up. Of course, why wouldn't the health ministers sign up? If they were being thrown money, not for additional services within hospitals and not for additional services across the health system, why wouldn't they take the money? Of course they would. But the problem was that the growth rate was 9½ per cent a year, and it was unsustainable. When the economy is growing at three per cent, who can say with hand on heart that spending increases of 10 per cent a year, year on year, are sustainable?

Nobody can, except the Labor Party, because the Labor Party have a history, since Federation, at a federal and state level, of thrusting this country into debt. People knew in New South Wales what the Labor Party did to the health system. They knew in Queensland, through Patel and the payroll debacle, what they did to the Queensland health system. And they knew over six years what federal Labor did to the health system in its best attempts to destroy it over that period.

This government will set up a world-leading medical research future fund. We will do that to protect the $20 billion capital amount. Why? Because we are worried that future Labor governments would seek to spend all of that money. Why would they do that? There are a couple of reasons. One is that they have not seen a dollar that they do not want to spend. The second is that people will remember back to 2011 and the fact that the member for Lilley, the former Treasurer, sought to rip out $400 million from medical research—but in the end was overturned by his caucus—so we know already that Labor has a track record for trying to rip money out of medical research.

Why is it important to put money into medical research? Again, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we need to be able to find the discoveries about, and the cures for, the diseases that will confront an ageing population. We need to address the fact that we have diseases of the brain—Alzheimer's, dementia. We need to make sure that we address those, particularly with an ageing population but as they present in younger patients as well. We need to make sure that, for the rare diseases, for the cancers, for the coronary diseases, we provide additional support to our medical researchers—world-class, world-leading medical researchers in the best institutes in the world. We will support those people, not just through the $900 million a year that we provide now to medical research but through the $1 billion that will be earnt from the $20 billion medical research fund to supplement that money and to make sure that we can provide those discoveries and cures over the coming decades. That is how, in part, we will make our health system sustainable. That is how we will strengthen Medicare. That is what this government is determined to do.

The second point in relation to this area is that we need to spend money efficiently. We will do that. We will do it in part by saying to the Australian public that, for services previously bulk-billed in general practice, in pathology and in diagnostics, we will ask for a co-payment of $7, $5 of which will go into the medical research fund and $2 of which will flow to the doctor. That will mean, for doctors in this country, an additional $468 million that will provide support to rebuilding general practice. Remember that Labor, over the course of the last six years, tried to rip down general practice through their failed GP Super Clinics Program and their attacks on doctors otherwise. We will restore confidence into the health system.

Make no mistake about this: the only threat to the universality of the Medicare system in this country is the Labor Party. You cannot have a universal system by providing everything for free. You must have a balanced system. Labor will waste money. They will propose programs but never deliver them. This coalition government was elected to clean up Labor's mess. Clean it up we will, and at the same time we will create the world's biggest medical research fund. But we will strengthen and modernise Medicare so that it can provide not just for today, not just for next year, but for decades to come. People will see this as the strongest contribution to Medicare in generations.

We cannot sustain a system of 263 million free services a year for a population of only 23 million. We retain bulk-billing for those people who cannot afford to contribute to their own health needs. We will provide increased funding every single year for our public hospitals around the country. We will provide more money for our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, where the Labor Party support a co-payment already. This is an important point for the public to recognise. The Labor Party claim to be the friends of those who are most ill and most in need, but they support—in opposition and in government—a co-payment in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from day one. From the first script, the Labor Party ask sick people to pay over $6 for every single prescription up until the safety net that we put in place to support those patients. Why is that not a tax? Why do the Labor Party say that the co-payment going to the PBS to make the PBS sustainable is not a tax? Why do they describe that as a co-payment and yet, when you go to see the doctor, somehow—for political purposes, not because they are interested in the health of Australians—they, for their own political reasons, term that a tax?

The Australian public got it dead right at the last election. They knew the Labor Party would waste money. They did. They knew that the Labor Party would not be able to implement health reform, and they did not. They knew that the Labor Party would put this country on an unsustainable path in an economic sense but also in relation to the health system, and they did. The Australian public tossed out that dreadful government of Rudd and Gillard because they wanted us to fix up Labor's mess, and that is what we are doing in this budget. We are strengthening and modernising Medicare, a 40-year-old system, and we are protecting universality as an important principle. The Labor Party seek to destroy it through their waste and mismanagement. The Australian public know in their hearts and in their minds that it is only a Liberal government, only a coalition government, that will strengthen Medicare for all generations to come.

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