Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation—the National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2014—is ideology disguised as reform. This is bad policy. It is policy that is going to affect low-income earners. It is policy that is going to affect Indigenous Australians. It is policy that is going to affect people in regional and rural Australia. It is policy that was not exposed to scrutiny by the Australian people at the last election. We heard from those opposite that there were not going to be cuts in health. But I will give one thing to the then shadow Treasurer: he made a speech a year or so before, in London, where he said, 'The age of entitlement has to end', and the circumstances were that things had to be done. In fact, in that speech he flagged co-payments around a range of different areas in the medical field. He flagged some of those things.

But where was it in the coalition's policy in the lead-up to the election? It just was not there. There was no mention. Since the election, we have had Churchillian appeals to ensure that we must all suffer. But I tell you what: you are suffering a lot more if you have a young family and you need access to medical facilities, you are suffering a lot more if you are a senior citizen in a situation where you need essential medications, you are suffering a lot more if you are an Indigenous Australian who has difficulty in accessing health services. And this legislation is part of a series of initiatives.

I am not surprised that those opposite are not speaking up in favour of this. They just want it to go through—because they are embarrassed. Many of them, I believe, are ashamed. They know what is happening out in their electorates: the same thing that is happening in ours. When we go out there, front the community and talk about what is going on, what is happening in this parliament, what is happening from the government many of them voted for—I can tell you what they are saying. They are saying: 'I did not vote for this. This is not what I thought I was getting. This is not what I was told by Tony Abbott. This is not what I was told by the local candidate for the coalition in the election campaign.' Instead they are getting these sorts of initiatives.

It is supposed to be, we hear, about sustainability and cost. Yet that flies in the face of what has been happening with PBS costs in recent years. The Labor government worked in consultation with the medicines industry to rein in PBS costs. Good reforms were done then—real reforms that delivered a cap, effectively, on the growth that was, for a while, quite unsustainable. In addition, if it really were about sustainability, what the government would be saying is: 'We are making this saving. We will take that money and put it into the area that we are trying to sustain.' But that is not where it is going. It is going into a medical research fund—and all we know about that is that we have a name for it, that it is going to cure everything and that it will happen down the track. That is cold comfort for the many people in Australian society who need access to medical services now, that is cold comfort for people in rural and regional Australia and that is cold comfort for Indigenous Australians who will be dealing with the pointy end of health reform—as this government calls it—in the years ahead.

The COAG Reform Council report released in early June made it clear that, when you increase costs to individuals, you can expect them to make choices—as we have seen in other jurisdictions. What we will see is as many as one in 10 people not accessing the medications that have been prescribed for them. These are not medications that they might like; they are not medications that they think it might be fun to take; they are medications that have been prescribed for them by registered medical practitioners—experts and professionals in their fields who have taken the Hippocratic oath, which is all about providing people with the services they need to maintain their health and wellbeing. In question time today, a number of members of the opposition, including the member for Ballarat and the Leader of the Opposition, discussed a petition signed by many medical professionals. There has been a massive outcry from medical professionals, making it very clear that this is not good health policy.

Despite all that, this bill will get through this place. I note that the member for Dickson, the Minister for Health, has said that the Labor Party have supported co-payments for 50 years. It is true—we have supported co-payments in this area for 50 years, but the argument that all co-payments are the same is ridiculous. It is like arguing that all taxes are the same. It is a joke.(Time expired)

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