Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This will benefit, Member for Shortland, not the people in North Sydney; it will benefit the people in New Norfolk and it will benefit the people in Beaconsfield and it will benefit the people in Sorell.

The bill replaces, as I mentioned, all the existing Medicare safety net arrangements with one new Medicare safety net. The existing Medicare safety net arrangements include the extended Medicare safety net, the original Medicare safety net and the greatest permissible gap. The current arrangements are confusing for patients and make it almost impossible for them to calculate rebates. The existing Medicare safety net arrangements are complex and regressive and, as I mentioned in my initial comments, have an inflationary effect within those providers.

The new Medicare safety net has been carefully designed to respond to issues raised by the reviews that I have also mentioned, and there has been consultation with stakeholders and the public more broadly. It is expected that more than 53,000 non-concession card holders and 80,500 more people on concessional benefits will benefit. Unlike the extended Medicare safety net, the amount of out-of-pocket costs per service that count towards the threshold will have a limit. They will be capped. The amount of safety benefits paid per services after the singles or families threshold has been reached will also have a universal limit.

As I mentioned, the electorate of Lyons is, according to the statistical area, an RA3—it is an outer regional area of Australia—and an RA4. It is a mixture of those. Let us look at where the current payments are going—and I will quote these figures on a per patient basis, because I think that highlights it best. Under the current arrangements, $1,535 per patient is spent on those people living in RA1, major cities of Australia. For RA3, outer regional Australia, only $156 per patient under the current arrangements is spent. Per patient for RA4—I know, member for Ballarat, this is not something familiar to you; these are people living in regional and remote areas of the country—it is $55 per person. This is why this is important. This is why in the electorate of Lyons this will have benefit.

Just to demonstrate for those opposite who may not realise, if we look at the socioeconomic indexes for areas, the SEIFA data cube, admittedly from 2011, and the decile distribution—the member for Shortland will be interested in this, and I congratulate her on staying for the remainder of my contribution—in the electorate of Lyons there are 299 statistical areas, SA1s. Twelve areas have not qualified. But if we look at the deciles and we look at the first decile, which reflects the most socially disadvantaged people within our community, 70 out of the 299 reside in that first decile. Another 63 reside in the second decile, 62 reside in the third decile, 42 in the fourth decile, 31 in the fifth decile. I am halfway through. If we go to the other end, there are two that sit in the 10th decile, in other words, in those most advantaged communities.

By contrast, the electorate of Ryan, for example, is completely the opposite, where 170 out of 350 reside in the 10th decile, and there is only one in the first decile. This is the fundamental thing. The money, from these changes, will flow to those people in the most disadvantaged communities around Australia. That, to my way of thinking, unless I am missing something here, is a notion of fairness. If the member for Ballarat, the shadow minister, is standing up for those communities, like the member for Ryan or the member for North Sydney when a new one is elected, if that is what she is doing, because that is where the members of the AMA are advocating—that is fine by me. I have no issues with that at all. That is entirely up to her.

All the good doctors that I know—my old man was a GP many years ago; he is no longer with this—were people that committed their lives to, first and foremost, delivering good and proper medical services to those people. When my father died, one of the proudest moments that I remember was when people came up to me at his funeral and said that, for many years, they had paid him in vegetables and jams and those sorts of things. And let me remind the member for Shortland that he was no soft touch. It was only when he understood people to be in circumstances where they did not have the wherewithal to be able to pay that he did those things for. Those are the good doctors that exist around the country.

But this bill is about fairness for those who are least able to afford. This is about fairness. This is about more access for more people. This is about reducing the inflationary effect that exists under the current arrangements. It is around introducing capping across the board. The benefits of the changes will result in a simplification of three systems into one. It should be supported by those on the other side that supposedly stand up for the most vulnerable—but apparently not.

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