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

I thought it was okay, Madam Speaker! Thank you very much to the member for Herbert for his question. All of us on this side of the parliament, are determined—absolutely determined—to strengthen Medicare; to make sure that we remain the best friend that Medicare has ever had.

I am sorry to say that when you look at those opposite, they are a shadow of their former selves. If you look back to the great Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, the last great Labor leader, he was a supporter of a co-payment because in his own words, he wanted to make sure that we could sustain Medicare going forward. At the moment in our country, for a population of 23 million people, we provide 263 million free services a year.

We cannot give everything for free to everyone on the credit card, which is Labor's proposal. That is not sustainable. We cannot be spending $20 billion a year on Medicare as we do today; we were spending $8 billion a year 10 years ago, going out to $34 billion in 10 years' time. We have to strengthen and modernise Medicare because, if we do not, we will go down Labours path of destruction, and debt, and deficit and borrowing money to pay interest and to pay the health bill. It is unsustainable.

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