Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill, the National Health Amendment (Safety Net Thresholds) Bill 2019. I want to echo many of the comments made by the previous member, who has spent a lifetime dedicated to helping others in his previous profession, and I know he still practices even though he serves in this place. It stands as a reminder of how lucky we are to have people who live to serve others and who live to heal others. I know the member for Macarthur is an outstanding representative of the medical field. It's a tough thing to come after him. Also the member for Lyne, who I have gotten to know over the last few weeks because we are serving on a committee on another matter together, has dedicated his life to the medical profession. It's a worthy profession. I can't say that I've had the same experience. My only job inside the healthcare profession was back when I was a pimply 18-year-old. I was a courier and I used to pick up blood samples from one hospital in Box Hill and deliver them to Peter MacCallum. It was just a small taste of getting to know and be a part of the health system. Even though I only did that job for a few months, there was certainly pride in working for our outstanding healthcare system.

Today we are obviously here to speak about the National Health Amendment (Safety Net Thresholds) Bill. As has been mentioned previously, the Labor Party will support this bill which reduces the safety net threshold from 1 January 2020. I think that we come to this debate with a basic premise that health care should be affordable and that the cost of medicines should not ever be a prohibitive factor for Australians. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the Labor Party have always believed that health care is a right and not a privilege and anything that we can do in this place to ensure that access to good-quality health care and good-quality medicines is absolutely essential.

Growing up, I had doctors in my family. My auntie was the family doctor, as was my grandfather. He also served on the head of hospital boards. One of the things that I never appreciated growing up was that good-quality health care and medical advice was only ever a phone call away. While many other people would have to go and book an appointment and hopefully get in to see their GP but often face a lengthy waiting list, my family were fortunate enough to just call and seek advice about whether we needed to seek further attention. It was, I think, one of the luckiest parts of my life. Both my parents worked hard, but having access to medical care was a crucial thing. It was something that I always appreciate now, especially as I've got a young daughter. Having to take her to the Monash one time at three in the morning was something that I certainly felt as a parent.

As I mentioned, we're here to support this bill. It is a bill that is, hopefully, going to make health care and medicines more affordable. On that premise, I think Australians are looking for more of that. They're looking for more of political parties saying: 'You know what? It's not about Labor; it's not about Liberal. This is about a good idea when we see it.' And we're here to back it. We're here to back the government. They have put forward this bill, and we think that it's worthy of support. But, by the same token, while we didn't get things right at the last election—and that hurts; no-one's here to say that the last election was where we wanted to be and, even though coming to this place is the privilege of my working life, obviously I would like to be sitting on the other side of the chamber talking about all the different reforms we are going to bring in—I do believe that the Labor Party brought to the last election some healthcare reforms that were going to make our country better, were going to make our country fairer and were going to reduce the cost of medicines and the cost of treatment, much like this bill sets out to do.

I'm just going to briefly touch on some of those reforms in the same spirit that we are treating this bill. The first one was, I think, the most significant piece of policy that the Labor Party brought to the last election and that we were proudest of and, if the government recognised it was a good idea and was willing to implement it, we would be the first to back it. That was our $2.3 billion cancer package, where $600 million was going to go to improving access and affordability of diagnostic imaging, with up to six million free cancer scans funded through Medicare; $500 million to cutting public hospital wait times for cancer treatment through a national partnership agreement with the states; $433 million to funding three million free consultations with oncologists and surgeons for cancer patients through the creation of a new bulk-billed Medicare item; and $125 million to cancer research. There would have been a guarantee that every drug recommended by the independent experts would be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Much like this bill, which seeks to ensure that medical treatment isn't a prohibitive factor for Australians, that, I think, is a policy that is worthy of support.

While we didn't win the election, we did come up with a plan to make treating cancer more affordable and to make sure that, if you had cancer, your job would be to worry about getting better and not worry about the cost of your treatment, the cost of your specialists and the cost of the medicines that you needed in order to make a full recovery. While we come today in this debate welcoming some reforms around the safety net thresholds, we would absolutely come back here and celebrate and work with the government if they were willing to support our cancer policy that we brought to the last election.

One of the other things I want to quickly mention is the proposed Better Hospitals Fund, where we had an extra $2.8 billion in funding for more beds and shorter surgery wait times over the six years. Hospitals in Victoria, my home state, would have been $635 million better off, including the Alfred Hospital in my electorate, which is one of our nation's finest medical institutes. I had the privilege of spending a bit of time with the doctors, nurses and researchers in the Alfred. It's quite a big medical research precinct in and around the Alfred, looking at ways in which we can find the next drugs, the next research and the next public policy health-saving measures to better the health and lives of Australians.

The other one is the Pensioner Dental Plan. The Prime Minister likes to talk about quiet Australians, but I think this policy would have made a huge impact on confidence and perhaps some of the neglect that many of our pensioners have felt simply by being hesitant when they're about to smile. That, I think, is something that we should never have in Australia. It is absolutely a medical right that Australians should have the confidence to have the ability to smile, to show off and to have healthy dental care. Our dental plan would have given you $1,000 worth of free essential dental medical care covered by Medicare every two years if you had an age pension or a Commonwealth seniors card. Over 185,000 older Australians would have benefited. We see too many Australians skipping dental care as a result of this.

These are just some of the measures that we brought to the last election. We say we're here to work together. We lost, and it hurt. While there are lots of arguments about who did what well and who did what not so well, I don't think any Australian would say that we don't become a better country by making medicines more affordable and by making sure the safety net thresholds are reduced. But I also think that Australians would say that we become a better country if, when you've got cancer, the medicines that you need in order to get better are covered by your government. If you are sick, you should focus on getting better.

While it is welcomed that the government has brought forward this bill to try and help alleviate some of the costs in health care, it hasn't always been a squeaky clean record when it comes to—

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