Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday and today in question time, the Minister for Health and Ageing answered questions in relation to what he called a ‘Bible ban’ in hospitals in Queensland and in Victoria. He said today:

I would be quite confident that the Bible ban is the result of overzealous local officials terrified of appearing culturally insensitive.

He went on to say:

This Bible ban is objectionable and should be withdrawn. It would take only a few words from the Victorian and the Queensland health ministers to overturn this ban. I respectfully suggest that they utter those few words.

I think Australians would be forgiven for believing that with the minister for health in charge of our health system the best hope they have got is a Bible! I can understand why they would come to that conclusion, but the problem here is that the minister for health has got the matter entirely wrong. There is no Bible ban in Victorian hospitals or in Queensland hospitals and on the quickest of researches the minister for health would be able to ascertain that fact.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hockey interjecting

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am defending the truth. I would have thought there was some interest in that from the Howard government. But now I have made the statement it seems to me a very absurd one: of course there is no interest by the Howard government in defending the truth. The Queensland Minister for Health has responded to letters of concern about this matter. He has made it absolutely clear that there is no Bible ban. The Victorian hospital system has also made it absolutely clear that there is no Bible ban. On the basis of the federal minister for health’s interest in the Bible, I would remind him that one of the 10 commandments is ‘You shall not give false evidence’. When I was learning my 10 commandments we used to say ‘You shall not bear false witness’—obviously we were studying a version of the Bible different from this one—but, whichever version one studies, clearly one of the injunctions of the 10 commandments is that one ought to tell the truth, and the minister for health ought to be telling the truth on this matter.

Australians might be wondering to themselves why the minister would be spending two lots of parliamentary time dealing with this issue when we do not hear from him at all on the fact that today in Australia there would have been people who wanted to see a GP but could not get in to see one because of the medical workforce shortage. There will be people tonight who have a sick child, a child in pain, and who would like to see a GP overnight or have a GP come to their home who will not be able to get that GP appointment and will rush to an emergency department of a hospital instead. There are people around this country on hospital waiting lists while the Howard government’s hospital funding rate of growth is less than the rate of growth of health inflation. At the same time there are hundreds of thousands of Australians on dental care waiting lists while this government does nothing. I would have thought the minister for health could spend some time on those issues rather than simply on the issue that he has raised today and yesterday.

Mr Speaker, I would like to take you to a specific issue that the minister for health should be dealing with: the question of the future of our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Last week the minister attempted to ingratiate himself with the Treasurer, and big-note himself as a policy wonk, by suggesting he had an overhaul of the PBS that would cut another $1 billion from the scheme. This is at a time when the cost of the PBS is not growing at all in real terms and when PBS savings are expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars higher than the original budget estimates. This attempt was quickly withdrawn. He quickly conceded that he was not going to go forward with this reform attempt in the face of opposition from doctors and pharmacists. But there is one thing that this minister should do: he should respond today to the letter from Heart Research Institute Australia, signed by 16 eminent doctors, to the Howard government, which has been sitting for two years on a positive Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommendation to list lipid-lowering drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs, on the PBS. These doctors are making it absolutely clear that this is important for managing disease—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, renal disease—and, particularly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. After two years this still remains undone. (Time expired)