Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister inform the House how Australians are benefiting from the Medicare safety net? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Casey for his question. I inform him and the House that the Howard government’s Medicare safety net is the most important structural change to our great Medicare system since its introduction 22 years ago. Thanks to the safety net, in this calendar year almost one million people will benefit from higher Medicare payments, at a cost of over $200 million. But they will not benefit if the member for Lalor gets her way, because she hates the safety net and wants to scrap it. She repeated her criticisms of the safety net in her Fabian Society speech last week. It was mostly an unsubtle attack on the Leader of the Opposition, but she did also criticise the safety net. This prompted the former chief of staff to the opposition leader to declare that ‘Lalor was worse than Latham’ and that ‘she was more sneaky but less suss than the former Leader of the Opposition’.

The member for Lalor says that the safety net is unfair because benefits are skewed to coalition electorates. That is what she says. Actually, if you have higher costs, you get higher benefits in every electorate, regardless of who holds it. I did look at the highest safety net benefit payments in New South Wales. I looked at those on an electorate by electorate basis. I found that they were not in Wentworth, not in Bradfield, not, I regret to say, in Warringah; the highest safety net benefits per electorate in New South Wales were actually in the electorate of Grayndler. No wonder Lalor hates the safety net! I came across something else the other day:

On current form, Albanese will support Beazley and do in his Left comrade, Gillard. Another sign of the madness of the Left.

This appeared on page 391 of The Latham Diaries, the entry from 30 November 2004. He went on to say:

I advised Julia to see if she could butter up Albo for the next six months—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order under standing order 104.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the point of order taken by the member for Grayndler. I call the minister, and I am listening closely to his answer.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the member for Grayndler might not like the safety net, but I can tell you that his constituents do. His constituents certainly like the safety net. Aren’t they such a bunch of happy campers over there? It is no wonder that the Leader of the Opposition said to his ‘cursed caucus’: ‘We’ve got to be much nicer to each other in future.’

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Has the minister completed his answer?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.