Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to deal with a number of issues that have been raised in this consideration in detail. The centrepiece of the health budget is not the $10 billion that is being invested across different areas, including $2.4 billion in Medicare, $2.2 billion in the PBS, $2.8 billion in the hospital system, $730 million in the Mersey and other different areas. The centrepiece is the partnerships and agreements struck with not just one, two, three or four but five major health sector professional groups. In particular we have struck an agreement with the AMA and the Royal Australian College of GPs to work for the long-term benefit of the medical profession and patients. Central to that was the process of reindexation.

That included—and I respond to the member for Ballarat here—for the first time since 2004 reindexation of diagnostic items. These are items I know are not on Labor's proposed reindexation list. It is not something they have ever committed to. In particular there are 58 items, including mammography, fluoroscopy, interventional radiology and computed tomography, which are still frozen under the Labor Party's proposal. Let me give you an example. Item 55848 and item 55850 for musculoskeletal ultrasound will not be unfrozen under Labor. They were not in their proposed changes. Items 56001 and 56221 for CT scans of the head and spine will not be unfrozen under Labor's proposal. They have never proposed any unfreezing of diagnostic imaging. They went through six years and did not unfreeze them.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

Those are examples. I understand it is a slight embarrassment for them.

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

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