John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This MPI topic is a very serious and complicated matter, and should be treated as such. Government administration of health is one of the most important policy responsibilities that we carry. Health policy should never remain stagnant, as health technologies, treatments and testing, and therefore disease management constantly change.

Commonwealth spending on Medicare has more than doubled from $8 billion in 2004 to $20 billion today, yet we raise only $10 billion from the Medicare levy. Ten years ago, the Medicare levy covered 67 per cent of the cost of Medicare, but now it covers only 54 per cent. This is why this government is conducting a once-in-a-generation review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule as part of our plan for a healthier Medicare. This review is looking at all of the more than 5,700 Medicare items, with a view of ensuring they are clinically contemporary and effective. This is the kind of rationale, sensible policy making that those opposite are too lazy and too short-sighted to achieve in the six years they had in government. The review is led by clinicians and supported by allied healthcare practitioners and consumers.

As the minister has already stated, the pause on indexation of MBS rebates will remain while the government works to reform the Medicare system and identify waste and inefficiencies through the MBS Review Taskforce and the Primary Health Care Advisory Group. As an article of good faith, the Minister for Health is open to a future review of the indexation pause as the work on reform progresses.

In contrast, Labor failed to deliver on their big promise of health reform. At the 2007 election, Labor promised a plan to fix hospitals and, if that was not achieved by mid-2009, that a referendum would be held to seek to take financial control of Australia's 750 public hospitals. In 2008, the Labor government promised to slash elective surgery waiting lists, yet the COAG Reform Council in its report on health care found the average national waiting time for elective surgery increased from 34 to 36 days between 2007-08 and 2011-12. It also found the waiting times of the 90th percentile—those waiting longest—increased from 235 days to 251 days.

The Labor government announced three supposed historic health reform agreements. Each was watered-down version of the previous one. Bureaucracy ballooned, while public hospitals, private healthcare insurance, dental and other areas have faced cuts. Average staffing numbers for the whole portfolio increased from under 5,000 in 2006 to over 6,300 in 2011, an increase of 27 per cent. The previous Labor government announced $1.6 billion reduction in public hospital funding and cut $3.5 billion from private healthcare insurance, forcing up premiums for over 10.6 million Australians with hospital cover.

The electorate of Bennelong is fortunate to be the home of the majority of Australia's pharmaceutical companies, innovative businesses that employ thousands of people and industry that invests its weight in research and development and that comprises one of our nation's largest non-mining export products.

Recently, I was delighted to welcome the Deputy Prime Minister to tour the AstraZeneca manufacturing facility in North Ryde—the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing export facility in this country. Guided by their new managing director Paul Spittle, the Deputy Prime Minister and I were amazed at the massive size and scale of the manufacturing of asthma medication, primarily for export to a growing market in China. It was hard not to recall the work that I did with AstraZeneca and many other Medicines Australia companies shortly after I was elected in 2010, as the Labor government made unprecedented changes to the convention on how governments list medicines on the PBS, in direct contradiction to the memorandum of understanding they had signed with the industry just several months earlier.

Of course, they were very happy to pocket the nearly $2 billion in savings committed to by the industry as part of the agreement. Several months later the Gillard government refused to list a number of medicines on the PBS that had been recommended by the independent PBAC, denying patients timely access to new medicines that had been independently assessed as safe and cost-effective. After substantial political pressure and a Senate inquiry— (Time expired)

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