Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Few things matter more to people than access to an affordable, quality and professional health service. Indeed, without good health you have very little else and very little else matters. But the Turnbull government simply does not seem to understand that. As the member for Ballarat has already pointed out, since coming to office the coalition government has cut almost $60 billion of health spending. Every state Premier acknowledges that and every state Premier has made the point that it will impact on the services they are able to deliver in their state. Some state premiers, in particular the Premier of New South Wales, are saying that some of the GST that they were talking about ought to go specifically to funding health across this nation.

Indeed, it is because of the cuts to health expenditure by this government that we are seeing an absolute shifting of costs from the federal government to the states. Not long ago I met some GPs in my electorate. They were being threatened with cuts to their practice payments, which meant they were going to have to cut their after-hours services; and that in turn was going to send more people to the public hospital up the road. That is exactly what is happening across the country, and that is why today the Premier of South Australia has made that point once again, saying that the $4 billion-plus in cuts that South Australia will lose could result in hospitals being closed.

The fact is that this government made cuts from the health budget not only before the current Prime Minister came into office; since then, we have seen another $2 billion in cuts, with $650 million being cut from pathology tests, from diagnostic testing and from other health prevention programs.

We have also seen $595 million in cuts to the health workforce. In answer to a question on notice that I placed, the minister responded to me only two weeks ago that we currently have in this country nearly 4½ thousand doctors on temporary visas—2½ thousand of them came in the last 12 months—and another 2½ thousand nurses and midwives. That is the sad state of workforce planning in this country when it comes to the health system. Again, what we are seeing from this government is simply more cuts. It just does not make sense.

I refer to Bloomberg, whom the Minister for Agriculture also referred to today. They say Australia's healthcare system ranks No. 6. The US health system ranks 44th out of 51 countries—yet this government is trying to take the Australian healthcare system down the US path. The reality is that not only does the US spends 8.5 per cent of its GDP on health, as opposed to Australia's six per cent; but it gets a much worse health outcome, and life expectancy in that country is much lower than life expectancy in Australia. That proves that our system, publicly funded as it is, is working well for the people of Australia. It is a system that we should not be trying to tear down; if anything, we should be trying to support it.

The sale of Medicare has been raised again today. That does not surprise me one iota. We know that the government wants to get rid of Australian Hearing as well, another terrific service that has served the people of this country for five decades. We know that this government has no interest in protecting the jobs of Australians. We see that in the cuts across the public sector. We see it in our research institutions, which have been decimated. We see it across the private sector, where the manufacturing sector and industry more broadly has had hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts. We have seen it in education and now we are seeing it in health.

These are the jobs of real Australians, real people who are providing services to people across the country. When it comes to jobs in the health sector, none are more important, because when you have a family member who needs health care, you want to know that you can go and get the service that they need. Sadly, those services are slowly disappearing. I get emails and people coming into my office on a regular basis who are having difficulty accessing services that they need urgently and desperately. It is all because of this government's cuts to health funding across the country, which in turn are flowing on to private services and the public systems in the states.

Medicare has served this country well for the last four decades. It is a universal health system that we should be proud of. It is a universal health system that has met the needs of this country. This government is now trying to destroy it. That is what will happen with the first step that the government has talked about today. (Time expired)

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