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

over the course of the last years, would be about $6.40 today. What is the government proposing today? A co-payment of $7. But, importantly, we are retaining bulk-billing not for four out of five services but for those people who cannot afford a co-payment themselves. That retains the principle of universality, which is what this matter of public importance is supposed to be about; it was mentioned only once during the course of the shadow minister's contribution. But universality means that you can provide support to those to those who cannot afford health-care costs themselves. We do that. It is central to the principle of the plan we have on the table. We say people who have the ability to pay $7 should pay it so that we can keep Medicare sustainable. If you want to adopt Labor's proposal that everything is free for everyone, and we continue to rack up debt on the credit card, it will fall over.

Australians are not stupid. They saw through the Rudd and Gillard governments and they see through Bill Shorten and his opposition as well. At the next election we will look the Australian public in the eye and say that yes, we have had to take tough decisions during the course of the first 12 months of this government, and no doubt over the course of the next two years, to rectify some of the waste and deficit that Labor racked up; but at the same time we have sustained a Medicare system which will serve us for decades to come. I do not have any problem at all saying that to the Australian public. But at the next election the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party will have to say to the Australian public that they are not prepared to make changes which will make Medicare sustainable. If we want to have that debate I am more than happy to have it.

If we had abolished bulk-billing altogether I would think the member for Ballarat might have a leg to stand on. If the member for Ballarat could stand up here and say, 'You have wiped out the ability to provide for those who are in most need', then she would have a fair debating point. But that is not what is on the table. The government has said we will take care of those who are most needy.

Where Labor's greatest hypocrisy lies in this particular debate is around pharmaceuticals. Labor says it is completely unreasonable to ask people who can pay a simple a co-payment to pay it. But at the same time it was Labor that introduced a co-payment in the pharmaceutical system for those on concession cards. You would not know it from the contributions of those opposite. When the sickest, poorest Australian needs to fill a prescription at the pharmacist does Labor say that they can bulk-bill and have that prescription for free? No, they do not. They say to that person, 'You will pay $6.10 for the first script and every subsequent script, and the safety net does not cut in until you reach about 60 scripts.' So an equivalent co-payment in the medicine system is $360. Labor presided over that system all the way through the Hawke years, the Keating years and the Gillard years—or the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd trifecta disaster for this country. They sat on that policy and they charged the sickest and poorest; yet they come in here and suggest that a $7 co-payment to keep Medicare sustainable, while still protecting those who cannot afford the $7, is somehow unreasonable. They are completely wrong on this topic.

Do you know what else they do in the states? If you go around state-by-state, the Labor party charges co-payments in relation to dental and other emergency services. We will highlight that as the weeks and months go along. The Labor Party will have to explain at the next election why it stands for a Medicare which is unsustainable.

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