Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Who could forget the 2014 budget—the lifters and the leaners? This is what the government would have us try and do. They want us to forget that 2014 budget—the budget which attacked the most vulnerable of Australians at every turn. The government want to try and paper over the fact that they had the lifters and leaners budget, that they tried to attack the most vulnerable of Australians. When it comes to health care there are two measures that this government still desperately believes in. One measure that government member after member stood in this place defending was the increase in the price of medicines for everybody, not just general patients but concession card holders as well. It was going to cost $5 every time you needed to fill a script at the doctor. This government decided and argued in this place that that measure was the most important thing that they needed to get through this parliament from the 2014 budget—that is, make it more expensive for Australians to access the medicines that they need.

I would have to say it is not really a debate when the other side come in and look like they have had to suck on a lemon in order to get the words out: 'I move a motion that I really do not want to have to move.' It is not really a debate when the other side is not willing to defend itself or defend its measures, because we know at its heart it wants these measures through. It put them through before. It believes they are in fact good measures. The Prime Minister said they are measures of merit. If they have the opportunity, if they have a different Senate, if they do not have every single member of the Labor Party standing against them in the Senate, doing the hard work of convincing the crossbenchers that these are bad measures then this government would put every single one of the $13 billion worth of cuts to the most vulnerable of Australians through this parliament. We know that is what they want to do. The fact that the minister has been unable to defend this says absolutely everything. This is when silence says it all. They know that if they argue the case on this they are arguing exactly what is in their minds. They really want every one of these measures back.

With the PBS increases—the cost every single time someone goes to fill a prescription: frankly, we already know that many Australians are not accessing vital medicines because of cost. We have pharmacists tell us every single day that people go into their pharmacies with a number of their scripts and they say, 'Which one of these can I afford not to have this week?' That is what is happening across the country now.

Members in this place argued: 'Oh, it is hardly any money at all. It's not going to make a difference. There is already a co-payment on the pharmaceuticals—it's already a cost; we are just hiking it by $5 for general patients.' Often that is for people on very marginal incomes as well, or for people who are very sick. Sometimes you are talking about people who have 13 different scripts that they have to fill, and they are not concessional patients. Then of course you have concession card holders as well. The government stood in this place and argued that this was the most important measure.

Of course the other measure that they are getting rid of—or so they say; we will see what happens in the coming months ahead—is the cuts to the Medicare Safety Net. Remember, the Medicare Safety Net and the Extended Medicare Safety Net are designed for people who, because of a very significant illness or something that has happened in their lives, have to access a large number of Medicare services—cancer patients, people seeking infertility treatment and people with very significant, severe and enduring mental health problems who are accessing Medicare at a substantial rate.

That is not to say there are not problems with the Medicare Safety Net. We reached out to the government during the budget processes several years ago and said, 'We're happy to work with you, but what you need to do is tell us that you are not going to cut money—that you are actually going to help patients access the services that they need.' Remember: these are some of the sickest Australians who are bearing huge out-of-pocket costs through no fault of their own other than that they have got sick, and they have got really sick. Again, this is the measure in the health portfolio that this government believed was the most important thing it needed to try to get through this parliament.

Frankly, you cannot trust this government when it comes to Medicare. On every single measure this government has gone after Medicare, because it does not believe in a universal health insurance scheme. At its heart it actually does not understand it. It really does not understand. Why do we have a universal health insurance scheme? Why does the World Health Organization hold Australia up as one of the countries that has universal health care that in fact is actually the envy of the world? It is because it is a scheme that is equitable. It actually goes to the heart of equity of access and it lifts everybody up. That is what a universal health scheme does. It makes sure that everybody contributes according to their capacity to pay and it then lifts everybody up, so the health of the nation actually improves.

That is what has happened in this country because of Medicare. The fact that we have higher life expectancy than other OECD countries, even those with comparable systems, is something that we should be celebrating. But this government does not actually get it. What it thinks is, 'Well, really, if you can afford to pay you should get better services.' That is what they actually believe. 'And if you can afford to pay more and more then you should get access to better services. And why shouldn't you?' We all remember the GP tax and the co-payment, and now of course their glacial unfreezing of the Medicare benefit freeze. That is basically what they have done.

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