Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The bill before the House, the Criminal Code Amendment (Impersonating a Commonwealth Body) Bill 2017, creates a new offence. I want to say at the outset that the bill is not necessary. It creates a new offence of impersonating a Commonwealth office or agency. We'll support the bill, but we argue quite strenuously that it is not necessary. There are already sufficient powers and offences within the Commonwealth Criminal Code to cover the offences, if they could be proved, that the member for Fairfax complains so bitterly about. I will join the member for Fairfax in debate on this particular issue because his contribution to this debate made it absolutely clear that there is not a scintilla of public interest in the bill before the House. It is all about the private political interests of the Prime Minister and the woeful performance of his party in the 2016 election. They only just managed to fall across the line in the 2016 election, so they are now attempting to change the rules to make it harder for their opponents to campaign against them.

Let's join the member for Fairfax in his hyperbole about what the bill and the debate are really about. The member for Fairfax is trying to convince this chamber and the Australian people that we were not joined in an argument about the future of Medicare in the 2016 election. You would have to have been residing on another planet if you did not understand that Medicare and the woeful performance of the Abbott and Turnbull governments in relation to health care were not a central issue of concern to voters in the 2016 election.

Labor is rightfully very proud of the contribution of Medicare. February 1st marked the 33rd anniversary of the start of Medicare, a historic Hawke government achievement, following on from the landmark efforts of the Whitlam Labor government to introduce Medibank a decade earlier. It took two Labor governments more than two decades to embed what is now seen by all Australians as a birthright: the ability to access affordable, world-class health care in a GP, in a public hospital and also by accessing drugs that are listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Today the coalition like to paint themselves as friends of Medicare, but we know that, for the entirety of the period between May 2014 and that terrible election performance and the closure of polls in 2016, the government were doing everything within their power to dismantle and defund Medicare and its associated organisations. They claim that what Labor was saying about Medicare is not true. This is what Labor was saying about Medicare: the GP tax—

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

If the minister at the table could keep his mouth closed for long enough he might learn something. I know that will be an enormous issue of restraint for the minister at the table. We told people that the GP tax, the Medicare rebate freeze, was going to lead to GP practices around the country stopping bulk billing. We told people the GP tax and the Medicare rebate freeze was going to lead to an increase in GP fees. Both of these things were happening at the very same time that the Prime Minister was standing up and talking to any TV camera that he could stick his head in front of and saying it was a lie. Even when we took photos to the Prime Minister, taken in my electorate, of GP surgeries that had signs on their windows saying—

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