Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Ballarat for bringing this matter of public importance to this House. It relates very strongly to the reason that I am here today.

The clue to what sort of government this would be came early—it came late on election night on 3 July. What we have seen since has been a cranky, insular, sullen, confused and intellectually lazy government. We already knew before the night of the 2016 election that this was a government whose solution to housing affordability was for voters to go out and get some rich parents. Its solution to the most important public need of all, health care, now appears to be: let the public system slide away—Medicare—and hope that private medicine will take up the slack, at least for those the government thinks matter.

Increasingly, we are faced with evidence of the government's failure to deliver on health policy and health commitments. Yes, there are pockets of good news—the funding of some new medications, as already mentioned, for cancer therapy. Genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, is one area. And I congratulate the minister on the approval of the use of medical marijuana in severe neurological disorders. I congratulate him. It was a good decision. It was one, I agree, overdue. I am just sorry the minister is not here to hear my congratulations on this matter. However, the most serious problem within this government that I see is a lack of an overall policy framework for health care for all Australians that is equitable and accessible. The government not only has no overall philosophy of health care but has no commitment to transparency in health care. Whilst it publicly states that it does not want to privatise or Americanise our healthcare system, it has privatised our national cancer register with very little debate. It is now looking to privatise our national hearing service. This information is only leaked very slowly. There is no transparency. Certainly, there is very little debate.

The coalition went to the election with very little clear health policies apart from freezing Medicare rebates for years, a move which all agree would gradually reduce bulk-billing to make health care less accessible to many vulnerable people. The Prime Minister came to my electorate to announce funding for insulin pumps for people with type 1 diabetes under the age of 21. He made a great fanfare about it. The parents of my patients with type 1 diabetes were very grateful but anxious that access to these tremendously life-changing treatments be available as soon as possible. The commitment was given to have them available on 1 January. However, now, eight months after the election, this policy has still not been implemented. Also, promises about mental health services have not been translated into action, and $1.4 billion has been cut from preventative health and health promotion grants.

Many of the Closing the Gap targets in Indigenous health have not been met, and the government just seems confused about what to do next. In my state of New South Wales, hospital waiting lists are longer now than they have been for decades. More and more people are struggling to access specialist care. Dental care is out of reach for many, particularly the elderly. Waiting times in my electorate for cataract surgery are over a year. Many people cannot afford to see an ENT surgeon, affecting many children with hearing loss. More and more people are struggling to access specialist neurologists and cardiologists where gap fees can now be over $300. The Liberal- National parties do not seem to understand the importance that access to health care has for some of the most disadvantaged and the importance of adequate funding of Indigenous health services, in particular, in making overall community wellbeing much improved.

I am in this place because in my practice I was increasingly concerned with the difficulty my patients were in having access to care. I was a medical student in 1975, when the Whitlam government introduced Medibank. That was destroyed by the Fraser Liberal government. I started my private practice in 1984 with the advent of Medicare, which was introduced by the Hawke Labor government. I saw the dramatic improvements that occurred. Demonstrably, only the Labor Party has a clear commitment to universal, affordable health care. This government's health policy is polarising and inequitable. They appear to have no real idea about complex health issues or the importance of equality in health care. Sir Michael Marmot, the former President of the World Medical Association, has spoken of the importance of the social determinants of health. In paediatrics, good health care can be a passport out of poverty and into education and social mobility. On this side we understand that. (Time expired)

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