Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He has family there, which is good—he is welcome any time in the Barossa Valley. He can come and visit me; he can drop by. If you go north of there, into Grey, to Redhill or up to Burra, or further up, you will understand just how long people have to drive to get chemo—it is hours and hours in the car to go to Adelaide. We saw that this was a problem and we fixed it. We put chemotherapy beds in places like Clare; we put chemotherapy beds in Gawler. When I was at the opening of the Gawler beds, there was a chap there who had to have blood transfusions for a very rare health condition and he said to me: 'If I could not go every day to the chemo bed in Gawler, I would probably be hospitalised in Adelaide.' That would have been the consequence. So we did not just make investments to stop people having that two-hour drive in the car; we also made those investments to keep people out of hospital—to make sure they get good treatment which will keep out them of hospital. And that is a saving. Every time you keep someone out of a hospital, it is a saving to the taxpayer and, most importantly, to that individual. It keeps them out of acute settings. We know that the more people are in acute settings, the worse it can be for them, and the worse the outcomes.

We on this side were all about making prudent and sensible investments that made health care better in this country. And that is what you have to do, Mr Deputy Speaker: if you want to keep people out of acute settings, you have to spend money up front. It means you have to actually treat GPs with trust and with professionalism, and treat them with dignity—because GPs are at the front line of this stuff. If we want to deal with diabetes, if we want to deal with some of these other things, then we have to make sure that GPs feel valued and we have to make sure that they do not feel undervalued. I have done tours in my electorate going around to GP clinics and talking to GPs: doctors feel very, very aggrieved by this government. And it is not just about the cuts to the GP rebate—cuts which are devastating for clinics out in the country and for clinics in outer suburbs; they are absolutely devastating for bulk-billing. This is just the GP tax regurgitated and put onto doctors—they have put the hammer onto doctors. We have recently had some matters—money sought, returns to Medicare, some issues with claiming of Medicare—that were used in the papers to try and blackguard every GP in the country, implying that GPs are all out to take advantage of the Medicare system. Frankly, that is a serious problem for this government. If you look at Australian Doctor magazine, or any of those magazines, doctors feel very, very undervalued by this government. And it is a serious problem because doctors are the front line—for this government or for any government—in dealing with chronic disease. We know that if diabetics go and see the doctor, and if they go and see the podiatrist, they are much less likely to have amputations—which, sadly, we have a great deal of in this country, and they cost us a great deal of money. I cannot really impress enough upon the government the arrangements we need to make, and the investments we have to make in preventive care. And that means valuing doctors.

This bill, the Health Insurance Amendment (Safety Net) Bill 2015 Bill, claims to be a simplified safety net—of course it is nothing but. It is a cut. It is a $270 million cut, on top of all the other cuts, and on top of the tax on Medicare. That is what it is. It is a brutal attack. And it belies all of this government's smooth talking, and its easygoing nature. As I said before, the Prime Minister, like Lord Muck, is coming in and describing every problem in glowing terms, and telling us about what the options are on every single issue, and talking about having a national discussion. That is all well and good. But it is not good when you are launching attack after attack from the Commonwealth benches on Medicare, with the hostility to universal health care in this country. There is absolutely no doubt about it; it is just that the hostility now is masked—masked behind a smile, behind smooth talking, behind fine oration, and behind—sadly—good men like the member for Hasluck. Behind their reasonableness is harshness and viciousness. How else can you explain raising the out-of-pocket costs for a person with a malignant melanoma by $7,400? That is a real thing that this bill is going to do. Or, for a person with prostate cancer who needs volumetric modulated arc therapy—I do not know what that is, but it does not sound pleasant—their out-of-pocket costs are 8,000 bucks. For women with breast cancer, patients will find a 200 per cent increase for their out-of-pocket costs for radiation oncology. Brian Owler said about this bill:

The new Medicare Safety Net arrangements, together with the ongoing freeze of Medicare patient rebates, mean that growing out-of-pocket costs will become a reality for all Australian families, including the most vulnerable patients in our community.

President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Professor Frank Jones, said:

Coupled with the indexation freeze, the legislation will actually increase the cost of care to vulnerable groups. Safety net thresholds will increase by CPI annually while rebates are frozen.

And what are the consequences of this? Well, for the average IVF cycle, IVF patients could face costs of between $10,00 and $15,000.

All of this is serious stuff. It should not be masked behind fine oratory, or a smile, or knifing a prime minister in the middle of the night and replacing him with someone who is all smiles and all reasonableness. That is going very well at the moment—apparently—but beneath the surface are all these cuts: the same vicious agenda on Medicare, the same vicious agenda on tax—which we will see shortly—and the same vicious agenda on incomes and penalty rates. All of these things are still bubbling away in the community. People hope they will go away. They hope that this government is going to take some new approaches. But that is not what we have seen with this bill this week. How many days in are we, with the new Prime Minister? I have lost count. It is not very long though, since the Prime Minister was replaced—because of popularity. And I have no doubt that the story behind the coup will eventually come out—the viciousness, the betrayal, the backstabbing—will come out and be revealed. The plotters will be there. All I am saying is true. And we all know that the Abbott-Turnbull government will become something else when the popularity diminishes. If that is the way you are going to judge a prime minister, if that is the way you are going to do it, then we know what will happen next. We know what will happen next to the member for Wentworth. It will be the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. We could get a chocolate wheel and just spin it, and get a new defence minister, a new industry minister, a whole new set of ministers on the National Security Committee. But the one thing that will remain is their hostility to Medicare, their hostility for ordinary people being treated with dignity in our community. That is the one thing that you can say will remain, no matter what the personnel changes are in this government. The one thing that will remain is the hostility, the viciousness towards Medicare and universal health care which is a mark of our national character and our decency as a nation. That is the truth.

Debate adjourned.

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