Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike you, I actually can use the television. Whilst watching the debate, I was transfixed by the stupidity of the arguments coming from the government. Because not once did they seek to defend their position while the opposition was calling them to account. The member for Hasluck said disparagingly, 'All you are are critics. All you do is criticise. You come on and scaremonger.' Goodness me! Let me just ask you a very simple question: if the Prime Minister at question time could not discount increasing the GST to 15 per cent, why shouldn't we be saying to the Australian people: you should be concerned about it? Why haven't you ruled out the GST?

Let me ask you a question, member for Hasluck: in my community, the issues that emerge are very, very important. On the prospect of a GST increase, Stephen Duckett from the Grattan Institute said:

… allowing insurers to cover GP visits could undermine universal access to healthcare—the fundamental principle of Australia's Medicare system.

He went on to say:

If health insurers could cover GP visits, they may pay doctors more than the Medicare rate, changing the market dynamics … That would be inflationary and it might have a flow-on effect to people without health insurance who will be expected to pay.

On the question of the GST, Professor Owler, President of the AMA, said that 'placing the GST on health services'—including services to the aged—'would hurt the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in the community'—and I might say the sickest and the people I am most concerned about it.

Let me just ask you this question: if the government is not intent on increasing the GST across items, including food; increasing the GST on petrol; and including the GST on health services, why doesn't it discount it? Why doesn't it say to the Australian people: 'Don't worry about it; we're not going to do it'? Because the Australian people have got every right to ask that question.

In my own communities in the Northern Territory, the sickest, poorest and most remote Australians live in my electorate. The people with the lowest socioeconomic outcomes in Australia—the people I am concerned about—are the sickest. They are 3.7 times more likely to have chronic kidney disease. They are 3.3 times more likely to have diabetes than other Australians. And what you are proposing to do, potentially, is increase the GST on health, food and other essential items, broadening the base and increasing the rate. Australians who live in remote communities know what you are about and, if you are very serious about this, you should say to the Australian people: 'Yes, we're going to do it' or 'No, we're not.'

Stop this game of saying: 'We don't have a policy.' We know you have got a policy; you just won't articulate it. We are articulating it for you, and you express concern about it. When we say you are going to increase the GST by 15 per cent and broaden the base, you should know this: those with the most acute rates of chronic disease, diabetes, heart disease, trachoma are the people who are going to be the most adversely affected by your ridiculous proposals on the GST and the ones worst affected by the changes you have made to health.

The $60 billion cuts to hospital services—who do they impact most on? Let us just ask that simple question. I walk around my electorate, I drive around it, I fly around it and I talk to great Australians but, by God, they are poor and some of them are very sick—and they are sick and tired of what is going on with this government. They know what is being proposed by the government in terms of a GST; what the government has done in terms of cutting health expenditure, including hospitals; and the $160 million out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

How do you say to people that you have not cut health expenditure when your own budget papers show it very clearly that you have? Why would you say to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: 'Don’t worry. We'll just cut $160 million out of preventative measures.' For the sickest Australians, prevention is the most important issue, and you have cut $160 million out of their budget. Any reasonable Australian understanding what has been going on here would agree with us. You need to be condemned for what you are doing. The Prime Minister needs to get up here and, instead of obfuscating, tell the Australian people of what he really thinks as opposed to what he wants us to think.

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