Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has been really difficult sitting here in the chamber listening to the doublespeak on the other side. I'm here as a hospital pharmacist and a mental health worker, and I just want to call out this claim about patients not being able to get medication over this delay in listing. I worked in mental health units in our public hospital at the time. No patient missed out on medication. Those medications were available under the patient familiarisation scheme because the medications were TGA listed. Not a single patient in our mental health service missed out on medications during that period, and I think that needs to be put on the record. This doublespeak is misleading the community and the public about access to medications.

If those opposite want to talk about access to medications, what about the problems we have in continuity of access to medications because of the delays in access because of manufacturing problems? That's a real access problem that we have in Australia at the moment.

The health of Australians should be the No. 1 priority of this government, and yet what has it done? It has just cut. Five years of cuts are what has happened to health in our hospitals. The cost of health care is growing, and the system is under strain. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report has finally revealed the full extent of the crisis. Despite this government's promise that no-one would pay more to see a doctor, the report shows that Australians are spending nearly $30 billion on out-of-pocket health expenses every year. In communities like mine, that's not affordable. As a community pharmacist, I've had people come to me and say: 'Which script should I not fill? Which one can I go without? Can I go without my cholesterol medication, or can I go without my hypertension medication? Which one?' That's not a choice that anybody should have to make in Australia today.

These cuts include $3 billion a year in non-hospital Medicare-subsidised services. Half of all patients have incurred out-of-pocket costs to see a GP or a specialist or to have a blood test, an X-ray or other scans. Seventy per cent of patients seeing specialists made some out-of-pocket payment, and more than a million people spent $600 or more on medical gap fees. That is not affordable. That's putting the health of everyday Australians at risk, particularly those in regional and rural communities. And 1.3 million people are delaying or skipping seeing a doctor or getting a test when they need it, putting their health at risk.

The report exposed the bulk-billing doublespeak of the health minister. The data reveals that only 66 per cent of patients are bulk-billed by their GP, not the 86 per cent the minister has claimed over and over again. The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association now confirms the figures cited by the minister are misleading. Despite this, the government have said 'Medicare has never been stronger' and their commitment to it is 'rock solid'. Perhaps it's like the 'rock-solid commitment' they have to the current Prime Minister. Yet they will not fully lift the Medicare freeze, with some elements staying in place for another two years. Two years is too long for people who are already out of pocket and whose health is at risk because of the costs of care.

Labor created Medicare, Labor created the PBS and only Labor will make sure that all Australians can access the health care that they need when they need it. In my community on the Central Coast of New South Wales, health care really matters. One in five of us is under 15, and one in five of us is aged over 65. The young and the old in our communities have the biggest health needs. What is our government's answer? This government has walked away from its commitment to the states to fifty-fifty fund public hospitals. In real terms that is a cut of $2.8 billion.

I'll give you a real-life example of what these cuts mean. How did the New South Wales government respond? It was by putting five public hospitals on the market and by threatening to sell public hospitals, to privatise them. But what did our community do? Our community stood up. We stood up for our community hospital and we stopped it being privatised. And my community will stand up again. They'll stand up against these cuts.

It is absolutely outrageous what this government has done to public hospitals and health care. I challenge anybody to walk into a public hospital, particularly into a mental healthcare unit, and tell me in good conscience—genuinely—they are properly funded. Tell me that.

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