Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps when the minister has her turn she might repeat the guarantee of the Prime Minister—if they want to assert that the Prime Minister is right—when he said that out-of-pocket costs will not increase for GP visits. In the 100 days since the election, we have not had anyone from that side repeat that guarantee. We have asked the Prime Minister about it in the parliament, and he has not wanted to repeat it. So perhaps when the minister next gets to her feet and has her go she could actually guarantee that people's out-of-pocket costs to go and see a GP will not increase as a result of her indexation. That is what the Prime Minister guaranteed, and we have not heard anything from the government since.

In fact, we have not heard very much from the government since we heard the Prime Minister have his little dummy spit after the election. We all remember having to wait up really late to see what the Prime Minister might say. Then he settled down a little bit and four days later came out with this quote:

We have to do more to reaffirm the faith of the Australian people in our commitment to health and to Medicare.

But what have we seen in that 100 or so days since the last election? We have seen nothing—zero; not a single thing. Indeed, every single health cut that this government took to the election remains on the table—every single one. They are as committed as ever to gutting Medicare, and we have just heard them try to justify making Australians pay more. That is their GP tax by stealth, which we know will reduce bulk-billing and drive even more patients into the overcrowded emergency departments. We know that really nothing has changed.

We know that the policy around making people pay more for vital tests and scans, including pap smears, has not changed. Nothing has changed since the election when it comes to that either. We also know that hiking up the costs of prescriptions has not changed. We have not heard very much from the other side about the cost of medicines. They are talking about putting more medicines on the PBS. Of course, some great reforms that Labor put in place when we were in office have allowed them to do that. Then of course we get to abolishing the Child Dental Benefits Scheme, pushing those five million children onto long public dental waiting lists. Nothing has changed from the government. I am not sure whether the minister understands the Child Dental Benefits Scheme. In Tasmania, if you go on the public waiting list, you wait for three years—three years! Under the current scheme, people can spend up to $1,000 over that two-year period for children and they get in to see a dentist when they need to.

Then we get the changes to the Medicare safety net—the taking of money out of the Medicare safety net. Again, nothing here has changed, and it appears that the government really has not learnt its lesson at all. Clearly the government does not understand what it is doing to people who are unwell. Clearly it does not get that people who do not have the funds in their pocket at the time are not going to get the health support that they need. Indeed, just last week we had the minister come out and say that the current policy settings are correct and that it was the campaigning that was wrong. The government really believes that it only lost all of those seats at the election, that Medicare was only an issue at the election, because it got its campaigning wrong. Clearly it is not listening to the people.

At a town hall meeting just outside my electorate on Sunday, our leader, Bill Shorten, got a question from a women with chronic illness. She talked constantly about her out-of-pocket costs and about how she is in pain and cannot get the services that she needs because of the costs. It is really serious. The AMA has said that this government's policies mean that the poorest, the sickest and the most vulnerable will be the hardest hit, and the government do not seem to care. The Prime Minister showed a bit of contrition a couple of days after the election, but nothing changed. Now the minister has come out saying that the policy settings are correct. Clearly they do not understand.

Just two weeks ago we had the health minister come out and say, 'I'm not going to accept that bulk-billing rates are falling, because they are not.' She is clearly backing in the Prime Minister with his guarantee. When I conclude here, I hope that the minister gets up and repeats the Prime Minister's guarantee that people will not be paying more out-of-pocket costs to visit the GP because of their indexation freeze. It would actually be nice to have the minister show a bit of empathy and understanding when she talks to people out and about in the community as health minister. This is really a very serious issue here, and the government need to do much more about it. They need to actually get out and about and they need to answer the questions of real people.

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