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

or a combination of 10 services over the course of a 12-month period, they can then revert back to a bulk-billing arrangement so there is a maximum impact of $70. I want to contrast that—because the Labor Party has made a lot of that, and the shadow minister made a lot of that in her contribution only a few moments ago—to the way in which Labor has approached the same co-payment principle in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme over many, many years. Now, quite cutely, the shadow health minister in recent weeks, in some sort of populist attempt to thrust herself into these discussions, has described the PBS co-payment as a tax. It really is quite deceptive, because if you look at the history of Labor, Labor introduced a co-payment for concession card holders on the PBS. They introduced a co-payment for concession card holders and they want to somehow reject that historical fact. But the historical fact is that the Labor Party doubled the contribution for concession card holders when it came to the money that they want people to contribute for their own scripts. So when somebody who is the sickest and the poorest Australian goes to the chemist and hands over the script, they pay $6.10 for each and every medicine until they get to 60 scripts in a calendar year. This was introduced by the Labor Party. Let us have a look at the figures. For 60 scripts, at $6.10, that is over $360 that that sickest and poorest Australian will pay before they move on to free medications. There is a safety net—quite appropriately so—once you get to 60 scripts or so. We support that and we want to make the PBS sustainable—absolutely. The impact is $360 on that person. Yet the Labor Party want to pretend that somehow the principle of applying a maximum $70 co-payment to that concession card holder or the child under the age of 16 is incredibly offensive and bad policy. The Labor Party need to explain to the Australian public why it is sound logic to apply a co-payment to the PBS but not to Medicare.

Over the last couple of months the government has made its case well in relation to the expense under Medicare. People know that over the last five or six years Medicare expense in this country has gone up by 42 per cent. They know that 10 years ago we were spending $8 billion a year on Medicare and today we spend $20 billion a year. The Labor Party run around saying people pay the Medicare levy through their tax and that should cover the $20 billion. That shows you how bad they are at economic management. The problem for the Labor Party is that we do not raise $20 billion through the Medicare levy. We do not raise $15 billion through the Medicare levy. We do not even raise $11 billion a year. We raise about $10 billion a year through the Medicare levy. So there is a $10 billion gap, and it grows and grows and grows each and every year. Why? Because the $10 billion is growing at a slower rate than the $20 billion expense. So that gap blows out each year and that is why we say that we should ask Australians who are capable of doing so to make a contribution of $7 when they go to the doctor so that we can address that gap and provide for all of that future medical expense.

That is absolutely logical, it is sound, and we are continuing discussions in good faith with the independent senators—who on this topic and many others are much easier to have discussions with than the Labor Party. People on the crossbench in the Senate actually understand that there is a problem. The Labor Party will not even acknowledge that that is a problem. That is quite ironic because there were two independent reports commissioned by Labor when they were in government—not Liberal Party work and not Labor Party work. The Labor Party commissioned two independent reports, by Christine Bennett and Simon McKeon, both of which came back to Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard saying health spending in its current form in our country was unsustainable and, secondly, that we should put more money into medical research.

We do both of those things in this budget. We are not asking for a $17.50 contribution such as operates in New Zealand. We are not saying that the co-contribution should be $16 as it is in some parts of Europe. We are not even saying it should be $15 as recommended by the Commission of Audit. We are saying $7 is a reasonable contribution for people to make. For people at the margins, who cannot afford the $7, we have retained bulk-billing. That is what bulk-billing should be about, not having 83-odd per cent of services free. That is not what bulk-billing is about. Bulk-billing is about providing support to those who cannot afford the $7—and we have the secondary safety net, which is incredibly important.

The shadow minister, in her MPI today, made reference to the increase in relation to the PBS co-payment. Yes, in this budget we have said that we want to keep the PBS sustainable. We spend about $9.3 billion a year on medicines in this country. We have got one of the best systems in the world and I will fight to protect it. I will fight to make sure we can afford those cancer drugs. I am looking at some drugs at the moment that cost $200,000 or $300,000 per patient per year, for which people pay $6.10 when they go to the doctors. We are talking about increasing that $6.10 by 80c. That is what we are recommending in this budget—80c. Some of those scripts that people fill for cancer are worth tens of thousands of dollars. As a health minister, I am extremely proud of the fact that we provide to people those life-saving drugs worth hundreds of millions of dollars on a daily basis.

We will continue to do that but, if we want to do it into the future, we cannot pretend that that money can come from nowhere. Labor racked up an enormous amount of debt. As the Treasurer said today, our country is paying $1 billion a month of interest on borrowed money each and every month. If we do not do anything about it over the course of the next 10 years, that $1 billion will blow out to $3 billion a month. Do people pretend that we can continue to put money into health or into pharmaceuticals with that sort of debt? No, they do not. We are providing a balanced approach. We will fight for the future of Medicare. The Labor Party should get out of the way.

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