Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to resist the temptation to be too hard on those opposite, but there is frankly too much material that we have heard this afternoon and it is far too tempting. We heard the member for Wakefield who claimed to save Holden. But given five minutes to talk about how we might save Medicare, he spent about half of his speech talking about his vomiting dog—extraordinary! The member for Throsby, while the health minister was speaking, said that we should pay more attention to Twitter when it comes to healthcare policy. We should pay more attention to Twitter? I know that Twitter is a source of much progressive policymaking on the left of politics, and the member for Throsby obviously supports a Twitter-led approach to policy development, but 140 characters is superficial and unsatisfactory when it comes to the big strategic issues confronting our country. I was most interested to see the word 'unrelenting' in the motion by the member for Ballarat because she and members opposite have been unrelenting in their unwillingness to address the strategic problems confronting our country. Health care is one of those areas.

By any measure, health care requires urgent attention. There is an abundance of evidence to say that in the last decade, our spending on health care has more than doubled, from $8 billion to $20 billion. We have heard members opposite claim there is no problem with Medicare, but we only raise half of that through the Medicare levy—about $10 billion. There is a structural problem that we need to fix. Spending is projected to climb in the next decade to $34 billion. So when we say it is a strategic challenge deserving of strategic leadership, it is because of the unmistakable fact that the healthcare system we established in July 1975 no longer meets the needs of our community today and, more importantly, into the future. It is a challenge that deserves extensive consultation to understand the friction points of why that economic problem will persist into the future and to identify areas of waste, and how to ensure the future sustainability of the system. The Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, is doing a great job. She was in Launceston only a few weeks ago, visiting the Launceston Medical Centre, sitting in a room with a whole bunch of GPs in my electorate and having them tell her what they think the issues are. As Minister Ley says, quite correctly:

Doing nothing is not an option.

My message to those opposite is: enough of the shrieking—

Mr Champion interjecting—

mendacious claims about the destruction of Medicare. It represents an appalling lack of composure from a party that once understood how important it was to address the big strategic issues of our country.

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