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

I want the parents to be proud of the son. I want them to be proud of the member for Fraser. They have had him in hiding for a couple of weeks now. Normally you could not get in between him and a camera, but they have hidden him for a couple of weeks. They have reduced him to some sort of IMAX, where he is holding up his book. Let me quote from the book. He says:

As economists have shown, the ideal model involves a small co-payment—not enough to put a dent in your weekly budget, but enough to make you think twice before you call the doctor—and the idea is hardly radical.

As it turns out, when we look at this family tree, there are another couple of people that we need to out today. The member for Lingiari voted for a co-payment in 1991. And we know that the member for Werriwa, the overachiever in the Ferguson family, voted for a co-payment as well. Good on him, because he wanted to make Medicare sustainable. We all want to make Medicare sustainable.

I can tell you, it must have been a torturous process for the member for Jagajaga over the course of the last 22 years and nine months, because she has kept this dark secret. She has kept a dark secret for all of that time. Not once can I find, over 23 years, the member for Jagajaga saying that she was opposed to the co-payment that Brian Howe introduced. This is the opportunity in this budget.

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