Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2014, is just one part of the government's strategy to effectively abolish Medicare. They want to destroy this very important system of universal health care introduced by the Hawke government. But it is part of the Labor Party's DNA to protect it and to advance it. It is something that is beloved by all Australians, but we know this government is absolutely determined to destroy it. In this regard, the Abbott government is channelling earlier incarnations of John Howard.

The last speaker, the member for Boothby, talked a bit about the history of these things. We know that John Howard in 1987 said that Medicare was 'a total disaster'. He promised, 'We will pull it right apart.' He said that they would get rid of bulk-billing. I know that the member for Mayo, who is sitting right here, was a learned member of Mr Howard's staff and helped to design Work Choices. I will not go into details here; it would be unfair to the member for Mayo to do so. I am indebted to Julia Gillard because she wrote an excellent article for the Evatt Foundation in which she recorded Mr Howard's other words about Medicare. He called it 'a miserable cruel fraud', 'a scandal', 'a total and complete failure', 'a quagmire', 'a total disaster', 'a financial monster' and 'a human nightmare'.

Mr Briggs interjecting—

For the member for Mayo's benefit, I think he also threatened to take a scalpel to Medicare. That was the early incarnation of John Howard. We know that Mr Howard's views were important, because so many on the government's side of the House regard him as an ideological leader, if not a mentor. I know the member for Mayo does. It is a great pity that none of them have the courage Mr Howard had at that time. At least Mr Howard was honest with the Australian people about his intentions towards Medicare. Later, when he recanted all those views in 1995 and 1996 in order to win an election, he basically stuck to those reformed views.

But we know that this government want to tear apart Medicare, absolutely rip it to shreds. At the same time they use this Orwellian language—that they are 'the best friend Medicare ever had'. Then you have the Minister for Health getting up here and talking about 'free' services, even though people pay a Medicare levy. They pay it every year through the tax system to pay for those services, to make the system of universal health care sustainable, to make it financially viable. Then we hear the government rolling out this language that it is 'unsustainable' and that it is 'free'—all of these sorts of things. They never pause to wonder at the irony that they are then taking the proceeds of the co-payments and putting them into a separate fund. So it is not as if this is a deficit reduction measure, and there is nothing about it going back into Medicare. It is all going off into a research fund. Research is worthwhile, but you have to question the government's intentions when they tell us the co-payments are about sustainability on one hand and then put the proceeds in a locked box on the other.

I heard the member for Bowman earlier talking about how they had been 'forced' to do it—how they had been forced into this situation. They have been forced, in this bill, to impose a tax on medicines, a $1.3 billion tax that will hurt consumers. But it is not about the sustainability of the system; it is about taking savings and putting them somewhere else. It is not about sustainability, which must be a term out of the focus groups; it is about ideology—the ideology of destroying Medicare, which is what this government intends to do. We see that in their GP tax, which I have spoken on in this House a couple of times today. It is a cascading, compounding tax: $7 every time you head into the waiting room, $7 every time you get a blood test, $7 if you have to go back to the doctor to check up on a medical condition. If you have pneumonia, it may be that you have to visit the doctor six times and it will cost $7 every time you get into that waiting room. That must be terrifying for so many families—particularly families in my electorate and across working- and middle-class Australia, who really do feel those out-of-pocket expenses.

This is coming on top of $80 billion worth of cuts to schools and hospitals—$50 billion in cuts to hospitals alone. We know the effects of $50 billion worth of cuts. It is equivalent to 4,300 hospital beds, more than 25,000 nurses or some 12,000 doctors, over seven years. These cuts are extraordinary. The New South Wales Premier called the budget a 'kick in the guts'. I know that the Premier and the Treasurer of my state, when they prepared the state budget, felt the burden of the cuts by this government. This budget is all about establishing a two-tiered healthcare system—an American system. This is the way the government have always wanted to head. They want to establish the kind of system the Americans are trying to get away from. We had Professor Stiglitz in the country wisely questioning why you would want to copy a system which does not have universality at its core, which places huge financial burdens on working- and middle-class Australians and which undermines the equity of the nation. The idea of a fair go is absolutely critical to the Australian character, particularly the modern Australian character. This is an idea that has been around since Federation. In these days when we do get such extremes in wealth, we know that we do not want to tie income to ability to access health care. However, we know that is the system that the government want to institute, with their $7 GP tax and their $1.3 billion tax on pharmaceuticals.

Of course, this policy is opposed by the AMA. The AMA said in a press release on 15 May 2014:

The Federal Government’s move to impose a co-payment for GP visits will deter people from seeking necessary medical care and could leave doctors $13 out-of-pocket if they waive the charge for their patients, the AMA has warned.

We know that doctors are desperately telling the government that this is going to hurt primary health care, which begins with the GPs in those general practices. I have already read out this letter from Dr Bruce Groves from Salisbury North, during the debate on the matter of public importance. He writes about the GP tax:

The measure is heartless, bereft of social conscience and punishes those who can least afford it.

Dr Bruce Groves is a good doctor who runs an important practice in Salisbury North. Salisbury North is a working-class suburb with a lot of people on fixed incomes, pensioners and the like, who are very confused and upset. They are fearful of what the government wants to do, not just on the PBS but on the GP tax as well. We know the devastating effect that the announcement of the GP tax had on Dr Groves's practice. He recorded a 30 per cent drop in attendance. As a patient of the GP clinic on Philip Highway in Elizabeth, though I have not been there for a while, I got a text message from the clinic saying that the $7 GP tax did not apply and it was business as usual for bulk-billing. They are sending out these texts to their customer base because they are already feeling the chilling effect of the government's determination to destroy Medicare.

As the member for Bendigo quite rightly pointed out, Labor's way has been to use price disclosure to fund the PBS—in effect, to channel the savings that a government might make back into the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. That is the appropriate way to run the health system. The Liberal way is to tax, pile on the costs and pile on the burdens on working- and middle-class families, and then to shift the money sideways. It is a vicious attack on working- and middle-class families—a cruel sort of pea and thimble trick or game of three-card monte, where someone always gets ripped off. It is an attempt to place Australian families in a detrimental situation without being honest about it. As I said before, the government's language in this regard is aimed completely at giving reassurance where there should be none. The government are not being straight with the Australian people about their intentions to destroy Medicare.

We know that the Prime Minister has a great deal of form in this regard. I cast my mind back to the days when he was health minister. On Saturday, 16 April 2005 the AM program recorded a story titled 'Abbott apologises for Safety Net backflip'. It begins with Elizabeth Jackson:

The embattled Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says he understands why there are loud calls today for his resignation, in the wake of the Government's decision to raise the Medicare Safety Net.

There is another example of the government's and the Prime Minister's commitment. Back then, he promised one thing before the election and then in 2005 had to creep out of cabinet with his tail between his legs, contemplating resignation but lacking the courage to resign. Mr Nick Grimm, in the same interview, put to him:

But you must have been either lying at the time when you referred to the cast iron guarantee, or you were hoping that the Government would go along with the blow-out.

That is what Mr Grimm put to Mr Abbott. And Mr Abbott said:

The statement—

then there is a pause, and we are used to the Prime Minister's pauses—

the statement that I made back then was the absolute truth to the best of my knowledge and belief at the time, but since the election the Government has obviously been reconsidering this matter, since the election the Government has been looking at the blow-out, not just in the short term, in the very long term, and responsible governments do not make commitments which turn out to be unsustainable.

Well, there you go. The Prime Minister has got form.

On Friday, 22 July 2011, it was put to him that his 2004 broken promise would give the Australian people some misgivings because he had given an absolutely 'rock solid, iron-clad' commitment—that is what he had said—about the Medicare safety net. In 2005 he said:

… when I made that statement, in the election campaign, I had not the slightest inkling that there would ever be any intention to change this. But obviously when circumstances change, governments do change their opinions …

He went on with a bit of verbiage about how that was then and this is now and that people should be completely trusting of him as opposition leader.

What do we get when he is Prime Minister? We get $80 billion worth of cuts which he did not talk about before the election. We get commitments to pensioners which were not fulfilled at all, and we now know how betrayed those pensioners feel. There was not one mention during the election campaign of the $7 cascading co-payment, the $7 GP tax that applies every time you waltz through a waiting room or get a blood test and the like. And we know he made commitments about Medicare Locals which he has now broken. So there are broken promises on savings, about schools and hospitals, on pensions, on the GP tax and things like the Medicare Locals. When you look at the form of the Prime Minister, both as health minister and now as Prime Minister, you have to say he has all the sincerity of a riverboat gambler. That is the terrible character of this government.

I will finish on this note. Mr Dutton in the MPI debate said the Australian people know in their hearts and minds that only a coalition government will strengthen Medicare for generations to come. There has been no greater chicanery uttered in this parliament than that by the health minister. They intend to tear Medicare limb from limb, to take a scalpel to it. It is just in their DNA. That is what they intend to do. We will be carrying the fight up to them every day until the election, along with the 67,000 Australians who have signed the petition to save Medicare—and there will be many, many more. The next election will be a referendum on Medicare. (Time expired)

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