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

Whilst I acknowledge the minister's contribution, I also remind you, Minister, that the Medicare item for mental health plans remains frozen until 2020 and that that is something you need to deal with if you are going to be serious about people's access to Medicare and that important part of the Medicare Benefits Schedule. I also want to briefly talk about out-of-pocket costs, which have risen substantially under this government, and also a little bit about prevention.

Under this government, we know that out-of-pocket costs for health care have absolutely skyrocketed. The worst part is that this budget is failing to deal with those immediately. Those out-of-pocket costs have been driven largely by the government's Medicare Benefits Schedule freeze. The fact that they have not dropped the freeze immediately shows that they have failed to understand the significant impact that this is having on members of our communities far and wide. People are seeing the impact of the government's freeze every time they go to the doctor and every time they go to see a specialist. Since the government announced the freeze in December 2014, average out-of-pocket costs for GPs have risen by $8.50 in New South Wales, $8 in Victoria, $7.70 in Queensland, $5.40 in South Australia, $7.30 in Western Australia, $5.90 in Tasmania, $5.80 in the Northern Territory and $11.10 here in the ACT.

Frankly, this is the GP tax. That is what this minister has delivered for the government: its GP tax. They could not get it through the parliament, so he froze the Medicare Benefits Schedule and did it by stealth. For years and years, the government's freeze has forced GPs across the country to abandon bulk-billing and to slug patients every time they visit the doctor. The worst part is that, because the government has not dropped the freeze immediately, that is continuing to have a significant impact on GPs and specialists across the country. I do want to again ask the government and the minister: how much more will Australians have to pay before this government's freeze fully ends in 2020? Does the government have any idea of the damage that its unfair cuts are doing to Australians' ability to access the health care that they need? Why is the government making Australians pay more every day for their health care while at the same time pursuing a tax cut?

One of the very disappointing areas of the budget has been prevention. There was a lot of speculation in the public health sector about what was going to happen on prevention. We had heard that some 70 proposals had been put forward by the department to ERC—that alcohol taxation had been proposed at some point but that that got knocked off, so there was no capacity for the government to actually improve its processes on prevention. We had the Prime Minister in his Press Club speech—obviously, early in the day, this minister had given him a line on health and told him, 'Our new focus is going to be on prevention.' Well, it was a pretty disappointing focus. There were a few initiatives in there which, of course, we welcome, but, really, they were far short of the millions of dollars that have been cut.

In particular, I want to ask some questions about tobacco. The government has completely dropped the ball when it comes to tobacco. Yesterday was World No Tobacco Day. Under plain packaging, we have seen a significant drop in the number of people smoking, but the government has done very little. There is no national education campaign around tobacco—no investment in that at all—and there have been cuts to funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander smoking prevention, both really important programs. Really, there have not been any significantly new initiatives in this space. So I want to ask the minister: do you think it is appropriate that Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco were present at the budget night dinner, a fundraiser for the Liberal Party; that they were donating to the Liberal Party on that night?

I also want to quickly ask the minister about Healthy Harold. The Minister for Education and Training, frankly, threw the Minister for Health under the bus today, confirming this morning in Senate estimates that it was a decision by Health, not Education, to cut the funding for Life Education—Healthy Harold. Why did the Minister for Health think it was okay to cut a children's health program in our schools? Frankly, is anything safe from this government's unfair cuts when it cuts funding for Healthy Harold? Minister, will you guarantee its funding?

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