Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the accusations of overcharging. I do not think that there is any part of the health system that does not have a bit of overcharging, and if it occurs we will act and we will prevent it. But let us get one thing clear: 'Do we treat the poor or do we treat the sick?' is the ridiculous question that Labor asks itself. If you have some money in your pocket, you are not eligible for dental care, and that is a complete disgrace. If you are sick, you deserve care; I do not care what you are earning. And if you are sick, you deserve dental care; I do not care what you are earning. But the Labor Party rule that out completely. They think that a floss, a shine and a pick at kids' teeth represents dental care. You have no idea how the dental scheme works. You would not even know the visiting hours in hospital. There is not a single person over there with a shred of health economics knowledge. When you have that, come back and engage in this debate in a serious manner. Right now, all you care about is cost; we care about effectiveness. You care about cost; we care about value. You care about cost; and we care about the utility of health care.

Sometimes the system has to change. Sometimes you have to find a better way of doing it. Sometimes this great chamber has to move away from the ridiculous and puerile idea that if you are cutting or ripping then it cannot become a better system. Of course it can, but there is one caveat: if you remove money from the system, you put it back in a more efficient way. What did Labor say? I remember very well that the shadow spokesperson for health, who was in the chamber a few minutes ago, said on Sunday, 27 September 2015:

In government, Labor worked with the medical profession to improve the quality and safety of Medicare, and where savings were realised, they were reinvested back into the health system.

Let us just fast forward to 6 January of this year:

Some of those savings did go back into the health Budget, not all of them.

That is right. This side is just as guilty as any political party of trying to find sensible savings to maintain one of the greatest health systems in the world. Sometimes you have to admit that $1 spent in one part of the health system could be slightly better spent somewhere else. But Labor do not get that, do they? Their notion is that the minute you touch something, goodness me, there might be a low-income Australian who cannot walk straight in, see their GP and be bulk-billed, where 80 per cent of them are, or go and get some diagnostic radiology and pathology, where 87 per cent of those services are bulk-billed. Let's hold on for a second: most people earning double the minimum wage are getting free health care, free diagnostic radiology and free pathology. This party has the effrontery to come in here and occupy time in this valuable chamber complaining about a one per cent change in bulk-billing and taking back some savings out of what is fundamentally two corporate providers of private pathology.

Listen to these flimsy heroes over there. They have barely one single serious connection with the private health sector, but listen to them jumping up and supporting major pathology corporates when it suits their political state of mind. They had no problem when they were in government ripping half a billion dollars out of pathology and boasting about it. They boasted about it! The minute that we try to do something that will drive better efficiencies in pathology, suddenly the Australian Labor Party are the great heroes of the corporates. It is wonderful to see the transition—they are pretty quick on their feet.

In reality, this mob over here, in six years of government, where the rubber really hits the road, never came up with anything that fundamentally improved the health system. What did they do? Eleven increased or new authorities. What were the fastest-growing things in health under their government? Water bubblers, executive toys, executive chairs and pot plants, because those guys could not wait to furnish the new bureaucracies here in Canberra that were going to transform the health system. But, if you were working out in Gundagai or down in Mungindi, you barely saw a change. You never saw a change in quality numbers, you never saw a change in specialist numbers and you never saw an improvement in access to care.

But they came up with plenty of Medicare Locals. That was pretty impressive, wasn't it? There were layers and layers of bureaucracy, health authorities talking about how to make a better health system and lots of fancy graphs and pie diagrams—you are very good at that too. You kept the government printer busy, that is for sure. But in reality, if you were on the front line, sitting down there in the Mater hospital, trying to see young kids who have a squint and hoping to get them on an unbelievably long state waiting list, Labor offered you nothing at all. If you had serious cavities in your teeth and you happened to have a job, Labor offered you nothing, because you were not poor enough. This extraordinary situation where Labor were rationing health care according to income was appalling.

Last of all, Labor nickelled and dimed private health cover, when before every election they said they would not—and, of course, 40 to 50 per cent of Australians saw their premiums going through the roof and wondered why. We get one chance in this world to get the health system right. This is one of the few nations utterly paralysed in the health debate, because this is the last political frontier where Labor are not collapsing in on themselves. This is the last topic of politics where Labor can talk to Australians and be given at least some credit that they might be able to run the system, but people who really know health know they cannot.

People who really know the system know that Labor are so wedded to not touching the fee-for-service bulk-billing system that they do not talk about any other topic. We cannot even get them to talk about hospital management. We cannot even get them to talk about diagnostic imaging and radiation oncology, where, under the public system, it is almost half as efficient as the private system. I know Labor are prepared to go down there and open the plaques and stand there for photos, but, at the same time, they are funding completely ineffective state hospital systems that are seeing patients at half the rate, and people are waiting twice as long to get treatment.

There is a serious side to all of this. It is not just about the billy banter from Young Labor and Young Liberal going on for generations. Ultimately, it is about a senior Australian who is diagnosed with cancer. At that moment, you really the test the system. How long will it take under a Labor process to get your first CT? What is the time to treatment for a poor Australian? The party on the other side, the Australian Labor Party, have never worked to reduce those times whatsoever. They have never made a strong private alternative for Australians, because they do not want to know that there is a private alternative.

Too many people have died too early because they were not able to get time to cancer treatment down. We need to get them seen quickly, with more specialists and with the best treatments. You do not do that by simply allowing costs to escalate. You do it by constantly looking around the health system, doing a flyover and asking what we can do better. I do not pretend to have all of the answers, but this country would be a fair bit better off if this place here could have a constructive debate, instead of these appalling motions going on and on about defending Medicare when it is utterly clear that, when Labor are in government, they do not.

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