Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

This is not a budget for Australia's future. This is not a budget about the future plans of this country, that invests in this nation and that deals with the very real challenges that we as a country have. This is a short-sighted attempt to do one thing and one thing alone: save the Prime Minister's job.

On the Treasurer's own numbers he has doubled the deficit in one year. That is an achievement for a. Treasurer. Spending is up, deficits are up and—guess what?—unemployment is up too. What a great Liberal Party achievement that is. In the coming financial years, deficit has doubled from the last budget, from $17 billion to $35 billion. That is on their watch. We know what this budget means for health. On budget night—last night—I trawled through the budget health papers. In the lead up, frankly, I was thinking that it could not possibly be worse than what they did in the last budget, but it was. By entrenching the $57 billion of cuts to public hospitals that will see emergency department times and elective surgery waiting times blow out, the services that are needed in public hospitals across the country will not be sustainable. Every time somebody tries to get a bed in a public hospital and cannot they will blame every single one of the members opposite.

Entrenched in the budget is the GP tax by stealth. They have had to reverse their several measures, their several goes at this, but the $1.3 billion indexation freeze on the Medicare Benefits Schedule, is already seeing bulk-billing rates in this country collapse across areas like Western Sydney, for example. Bulk-billing rates are collapsing and people are having to pay more to access the health services they need. Also entrenched in this budget is the $1.3 billion hike to the cost of medicines. When people are trying to get access to medicines, the prescriptions they need will be going up under this government.

And, of course, in a trick to the medical research community, they say the Medical Research Future Fund is still there and they are going to be funding $400 million over the course of the next four years. That of course is if they pass every one of the retrograde steps that they want to impose on patients across this country. They know the PBS hikes will not pass the Senate, yet they have included them in the figures for the Medical Research Future Fund. It is an absolute travesty that they have held this fund out to the medical research community off the back of substantial cuts to services to patients.

But we saw even worse in this budget: $2 billion of extra cuts in health funding. They come from the flexible funding program, which, for people in your communities who may not be aware, funds hundreds of not-for-profit organisations in every single electorate across the country. It funds important services such as drug and alcohol services, mental health services, rural health outreach services and not-for-profit organisations such as the Heart Foundation, the Consumers Health Forum and a range of other organisations. The Public Health Association called last night a blood bath for those organisations. They will have their funding cut.

We have also seen $125 million cut out of the child dental benefits scheme. We have seen further cuts to the adult dental benefits scheme in this budget as well. We have seen cuts to the health workforce programs. We have also seen $70 million cut from veterans dental schemes. So, on top of the huge cuts in last year's budget—cuts to prevention, cuts to dental health, cuts to public hospitals; you name it, there was not an area of health they did not see as worthy of a cut—the government have put $2 billion of extra cuts in this budget.

We have also seen the government starting to negotiate the new community pharmacy agreement with the Pharmacy Guild. The cuts to that agreement are not contained in this budget; so there are further cuts to come. Again, this government never saw a health policy or health program it did not want to cut. (Time expired)

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