Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for that question and for her interest in this topic. My department has responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the names and trademarks of many government agencies and services. This includes Centrelink, myGov, the Child Support Agency and, of course, Medicare. This is to ensure that, when Australians see those brands, they can have confidence in them. Australians do not want to have to second-guess whether the messages they receive from government agencies are legitimate. Having confidence in the Medicare brand is particularly important, given the trust that people place in it. Indeed, that is why we have legislation such as the Human Services (Medicare) Act to protect those brands from misuse.

We are all aware that the federal Labor Party deliberately used this brand during their federal campaign, and they tried to mislead and deceive the Australian public. But this week the ACT Labor Party was at it again, because they were distributing—

Mr Hill interjecting—

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