Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government is continuing to improve our health system by:

(a) strengthening Medicare by:

(i) growing the number of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics to 87;

(ii) expanding the range of free mental health services;

(iii) increasing the number of Medicare eligible magnetic resonance imaging machines;

(iv) delivering funding for Medicare rebates for nuclear medicine imaging and common medical tests; and

(v) boosting the supply of healthcare in areas of shortage; and

(b) easing cost of living pressures with cheaper medicines, and through:

(i) reducing patient costs and improving access to medicines;

(ii) listing new medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme;

(iii) making Australia a destination for clinical trials; and

(iv) investing in ground-breaking new health and medical research; and

(2) acknowledges:

(a) that only a Labor-led Government can be trusted to invest in and strengthen Medicare; and

(b) the damage done to Australia's health system by the Leader of the Opposition who, as the Minister for Health:

(i) tried to tax visits to general practitioners;

(ii) tried to tax visits to emergency departments; and

(iii) cut $50 billion from Australian hospitals.

Australia is fortunate to have a largely universal healthcare system that seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of all Australians. Only Labor understands that. After 10 years of coalition government, we saw: our hospitals under incredible stress; people unable to get in to see a GP; people unable to afford to see a GP; and the costs of seeing specialists becoming unaffordable for many people. Unfortunately, I've seen it all before.

When I started my private practice in 1984, it was the beginning of Medicare. But people had forgotten that Medibank, introduced by Gough Whitlam, was the initial iteration of our universal healthcare scheme that was destroyed by the Fraser government. We then saw the introduction of Medicare, but, with the election of the Abbott government, look what happened! We had Peter Dutton, the present Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, trying to introduce Medicare co-payments, trying to make people pay to be seen in the public hospital system, making health care more and more unaffordable for average Australians. This was terrible and this was one of the reasons that spurred me to run in 2016. I was sick and tired of writing to ministers and departments regarding issues affecting my patients. We saw people who had kids with asthma not being able to afford their preventer medications, causing them to end up in hospital. We saw people with heart failure not being able to afford their medications, medications becoming more and more unaffordable. I think that there's something wrong with the timer, Deputy speaker.

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