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

The Turnbull government is obsessed with destroying Australia's universal health system. We see that through its $60 billion cuts to hospitals, the four-year freeze on Medicare rebates for GPs, the $650 million cuts to Medicare rebates for pathology and diagnostic imaging, cutting health workforce programs by $595 million, e-health and health prevention programs also cut by $146 million, the $1.3 billion hike on essential medicines, and now we also see the attacks on the child dental benefits scheme. After already cutting $125 million from the scheme—this is a $2.7 billion program implemented by the last Labor government—the Turnbull government now plans to abolish the scheme altogether. It is clear from the Prime Minister's response in question time today that that is what they have in mind.

This is a decision that will remove access of 3.4 million eligible children to a scheme that gives them $1,000 in dental care over two years. It is a program that, to date, has supported one million Australian children with dental services. The President of the Australian Dental Association, Dr Rick Olive, says about the cuts: 'This is bad policy, which the ADA is flabbergasted to hear about.' He went on to say that ending the child dental benefits scheme 'will significantly disadvantage children from low-income families, who we know have greater oral health needs'. South Australia has the highest child dental scheme uptake of all the states—38.4 per cent of eligible children used the scheme. In actual figures—in raw figures—87,000 South Australian children accessed this scheme. South Australia and Tasmania have the highest numbers of eligible children, reflecting the high disadvantage in parts of those states. Put simply: cutting the child dental benefit scheme would be another cruel cut which would hit the poorest and most disadvantaged the hardest.

Let us look at some of the other cuts, and I refer to the hospital cuts as well. The AMA's Public Hospital Report Card 2016 says about the cuts to public hospitals that 'waiting times have not improved and no progress has been made towards access and treatment targets'. We go on to the Diagnostic Imaging Association, who say about the cuts to their services: 'We are concerned that many Australians who don't know they have a treatable condition will now put off or choose not to seek a diagnosis because the up-front and out-of-pocket costs are likely to be prohibitive—an average $134 to $214 up-front and $14 to $94 out of pocket. These are conservative estimates.'

Those quotes peak for themselves. It is not just Labor who is concerned about these cuts; it is the professionals who work in the industry—such as the CEO of Primary Health Care Limited, when he talks about bulk-billing incentive cuts for pathology providers: 'Pathology providers no longer have any capacity to absorb further funding cuts without charging fees or reducing access to services. Australians don't want a co-payment by stealth.' They have had their payments frozen for 20 years, and yet this government is trying to bring in co-payments by stealth.

This government wants to destroy Australia's universal Medicare services and take us to a US-style health system where those who can afford treatment get it and those who cannot miss out. In recent times I have received numerous emails from people in my electorate who are concerned about the proposal to do away with Australia's Medicare system. People have woken up to the fact that that is what this government wants to do, and it is doing it by stealth, one step at a time. The reality is the government wants to do that for two reasons: (1) because it has never supported the universal health system that we have, and (2) because it wants to balance its budget mess on the back of the poorest people in this country. It has shown that it wants to do that by cutting family payments, by cutting education funding, by pushing university degrees to up to $100,000, by cutting legal aid, by cutting funds to pensioners and by cutting front-line services to the community. All of these cuts, every single one of them, hit the most disadvantaged in our community the hardest, and that is why Labor will oppose these cuts right through to the election and ensure that we do our best to protect the services that the Australian people need.

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