Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is nice to wind up the week with a health discussion. Let me just say that all the good people are in here this afternoon; all the people with a heart for the health system. The people at home and in the gallery will be pleased to know that the $120 billion health system has bipartisan passion. You also need a little bit of memory. I think today is probably a good time to do a little shout out to a few Australians—those who were hoping to have their teeth fixed under the CDDS and had it ripped out from under them for the dreadful crime, no less, of having a job. Having a job made them ineligible under the Labor scheme and they ripped out their dental care.

Let's do a little shout out to medical graduates. Remember those medical graduates that could not get an internship under the Labor Party? They were left until the last moment. We had privately funded overseas medical students flying home because they could not get an internship. Let's have a little shout out to them as well. How about the lovely pensioner couples who were told they could not get a cataract operation? Let's have a shout out to them. Remember we cut the rebate in half? Nickel and diming the health system. I remember Nicola Roxon: 'Let's just slash the Medicare rebate for cataract operations in half and see how it goes.' At the same time that cuts in half, there is the payment to the private hospital to do a cataract operation.

All those Australians have very long memories. These guys may well have their talking points from the Labor Party. Every time there is a desperate week with nothing to talk about in the opposition, there is a little frisson of excitement when they find that there might be someone who missed out on a welfare pavement—'We can make a story about that. We can get that one rolling'—and somehow it just does not get reported again.

In health it is pretty complex—multi-jurisdictional economics, private sector, public sector, private operators, highly technological innovations in health. All of it has to be funded, and I will let you know today that Australia is doing very well, thank you very much—not much to do with six years of absent landlord management from the Labor Party. Let's look at that side of the parliament and see how much health experience is over there. I am peering over there. I see a diligent union rep over there. The member for Bendigo is a member of passion for social services. She is here today. I can see the member for Griffith—a massive intellect. I think she would barely know the visiting hours at her local hospital. Do we have anyone else there who even knows their way to an emergency ward or could find their way to ICU? The only thing up there is your argument, Labor Party. Your argument belongs in intensive and critical care.

This is a complex area—let's face it; it is health—but you are guilty by omission today of not being clear about your very own cuts. This is a massively exciting moment in health as we have moved towards health performance. There is the National Health Performance Authority—one of the 11 that you guys created or extended and almost forgot for a minute. There are thousands of public servants who say thank you for our jobs in the agencies—'Thank you for creating thousands of jobs and the double-dipping of PPL that we got along with it. Thank you very much for that.' More jobs created, more water bubblers in the public sector, and more places to sit around in the tea room and talk about the health care you should be delivering on the front line but do not, because you are working in an agency that was not making an ounce of difference to health care in Australia.

Let's get back to the doctors, to the nurses, to the students who are the doctors, nurses and allied health practitioners of tomorrow. They know we need early intervention, and the best that this side could to was a preschool health check for four-year-olds. That is right—that is when health started, wasn't it? A preschool check at the age of four. They are virtually abandoning children between the age of 18 months and four years. There is no plan for early intervention. That was a government that presided over nothing more than extending and expanding agencies and cutting Medicare rebates in half, and now they have the gall to accuse us of something similar. Far more than that, what is happening now is a rational conversation with general practitioners who, far from what you are saying, are not marching in the street. General practitioners know that we are talking about improving the Medicare system through a review, improving chronic disease management and reducing the 635,000 avoidable hospital admissions. We are in constructive dialogue, but you guys never have been, because you burnt off your connections to the health sector within an hour of being elected. You are a Labor Party that is all talk about entitlements and rights to payments and nothing about self-responsibility—looking after one's own health and one's family's health and making sure we can have the best services possible in our communities.

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