Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government that cannot be trusted on health care. They cannot be trusted to fund hospitals properly. Australians know it and they just do not trust you. They do not believe you, because time and time again they have seen this government undermining our universal healthcare system. They just do not trust you on these issues. This government has proven time and time again that it simply does not care about the health of Australians.

There is no better example of the fact that they do not care than the six-year freeze on Medicare rebates. Before the election The Prime Minister promised that no Australian would pay more to see a GP under his Medicare freeze. That turned out to be a lie. Australians are paying a lot more to go to the GP now. In fact, the government's freeze has made health care much more expensive for all Australians. This is on top of their cuts to hospitals and other areas of health care, as well.

I think this six-year freeze on the Medicare rebate really highlights the twisted priorities of this government. They can give a $50 billion tax cut to big business and multimillionaires on the one hand, yet on the other they cut funding to health. They are twisted priorities. In contrast, our priorities in health care are based on fairer funding and greater access to services. We made the choice to not give away $50 billion in a corporate tax cut. We choose to properly fund services. That is our priority. Remember, this government previously failed three times to introduce their GP tax. They tried very hard to do that. That did not work, so instead they imposed a GP tax by stealth—freezing the indexation of those rebates. We made it clear at the election that Labor was committed to lifting the government's freeze on the indexation. This was very popular, I can tell you, in my electorate, because people in my electorate just do not trust this Liberal-National government.

There is a lot of speculation leading up to the budget about what the government may or may not do. We will keep on calling on them to make sure they lift this freeze. We have asked them on many occasions to do that. It is going to be a real test for them to see what happens in the budget, because at every opportunity to reverse the freeze they have done nothing. In fact, they have just extended it. In 2014 they introduced the freeze and in 2016 the Prime Minister himself extended it to 2020. The government have been made very aware of these impacts. They have heard it from the community. GPs, specialists and health experts have been sending a clear and strong message: the freeze is hurting and it should be dropped. I hope the government are listening and I hope, when it comes to the budget, they get rid of it. This freeze comes on top of a lot of other harsh cuts by this government that have hurt the community—cutting over $1 billion from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and increasing the co-payments, cutting diagnostic imaging and pathology, cutting the Medicare safety net—and also their failure to properly fund our public hospitals. This has seen elective surgery waiting times blow out under the Turnbull Liberal-National government to the worst they have ever been.

The combination of all these cuts has been devastating for our country, and particularly devastating for rural and regional areas like mine on the New South Wales North Coast. As I have said many times before, it is choices by the National Party that particularly hurt our regional and rural areas, and they are to be held accountable for these cruel cuts to health and hospital funding. In areas like mine we see the impact of cuts by the federal government such as those ones I have listed, but we also have a state Liberal-National government whose cuts are doubly hurting us. We have right across our region such a lack of funding for health and hospital care. It is so detrimental. In fact, we recently highlighted the fact that our Tweed Hospital is in absolute crisis. I would just like to highlight an article from The Tweed Daily Newson Wednesday, 8 March, with front page 'Out Of Patience' and headline 'Doctors call for help':

Fed-up doctors and nurses are calling on the community to get behind their push to lobby the State Government into action on the stalled redevelopment of the Tweed Hospital … the hospital's Medical Staff Council decided to take the dramatic step of calling out the NSW Government for failing to deliver on its promises to redevelop the facility.

This comes on the back of the lies of the state National Party MP for Tweed at the last election. He said, 'There's $48 million for the Tweed Hospital'—not true; did not happen. We now have doctors speaking out because our hospital is in crisis. This is in absolute crisis, as are other healthcare providers in the region, and this is on top of all of the Turnbull Liberal-National government's cuts to Medicare and cuts to hospital funding. It is leading to a real health crisis in areas like mine, where we have a large proportion of seniors, who have much more complex health needs and are really devastated. That is why at the last election there was a very positive swing to Labor due to the fact that we want to protect Medicare. We created it and will always fight to protect it.

See this speech in context