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

We have the sorts of guarantees from the parliamentary secretary opposite and we know what they are worth. We know what your word is worth after the last election.

They have dismantled Health Workforce Australia. So no more planning for our health workforce, no more planning for doctor shortages or nurse shortages or allied health insurance—all services that are so important out in the regions and out in the bush.

We know that they have just abolished Medicare Locals at huge public expense, shifting boundaries, messing about with organisations which were just getting on with the job. I went out to Seppeltsfield for the Indigenous Marathon Project. Robert de Castella was there. We were all running. It was a very good program. Medicare Local was there, doing what they should be doing, talking about preventive health, and what are those opposite doing? They are closing it down. They are shifting the boundaries in another bureaucratic reorganisation. They have the gall to stand up in this parliament and tell us all that they are abolishing red tape—that is what we heard in the previous debate— well not for the doctors, not for pathology, not for diagnostic services and not in health. There is more red tape and more out-of-pocket costs than ever before.

They are setting up entire billing systems which have not had to exist before. That is the record of those opposite in health. It should be terrifying the backbench on the opposite side. They should be terrified every time the health minister gets up and says, 'We're the best friend Medicare ever had.' If you think anybody believes that after the litany of broken promises, broken commitments made with a sense of completely bad faith, manipulative and wrong, you will not get away with it. At the next election there will be an army of Labor candidates campaigning against you, stopping you destroying Medicare. There will be more than a few doctors, more than a few nurses and more than a few people from the country who want to stop this assault on Medicare, this assault on the public health system and this assault on the Australian way.

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