Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

And, if the member really wants to entertain this dialogue, we will give him a full list: $1.8 billion worth of cuts to general practice; the proposals to increase the cost of medicines; the proposals to increase the costs of blood tests, X-rays and MRIs, which we learn will cost the average patient up to $60 a presentation. If this is what it means to be 'agile', I want to be standing for something different. If this is what 'agile' means, it is not what we are for. On this side of the House we stand for Medicare. We stand for a decently funded hospital system.

We learned today that the new government led by the new Prime Minister has not discarded their ferocious plans to attack Medicare, because we find today that there is a proposal to privatise Medicare. This will put the livelihoods of between 5,000 and 10,000 hardworking Australians at risk. I would have thought the member for Bass over there—who always has a lot to say—in an electorate like his, with such high unemployment, would be going into bat for the employees of Medicare, but he cares about something far less than that.

The only thing more ridiculous than the idea that we are going to privatise Medicare is the idea of putting the embattled Minister for Human Services in charge of such a proposition. Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous proposition? Those on this side of the House are going to fight until our last breath to ensure that we have a well-funded public hospital system and a Medicare system that is fit for the purpose of dealing with health inequality in this country. (Time expired)

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