Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a mean and tricky government, built on a litany of broken promises, none more egregious than the promise to have no cuts to health. It is a mean and tricky government and a disingenuous one, but it has shown remarkable consistency in one respect: its ideological determination to dismantle universal health care, to destroy Medicare. Through two ministers and five iterations of a GP tax, it still has not walked away.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or listened.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or listened, indeed, and it should be listening, particularly to the constituents in Scullin. There is no issue more important to the people I represent in this place than universal health care. Nearly 10,000 people have signed a petition to save Medicare, a petition that should be listened to by the parliamentary secretary and his colleagues, not scoffed at. Ninety-three per cent of visits to the GP in the Scullin electorate are bulk-billed, the highest rate in Victoria. I think this is a good thing. It is about quality health care and it is about maintaining living standards. We understand, on this side of the House, that Medicare is the cornerstone of the social wage in Australia. This GP tax by stealth underpins the notion that this is a government that is not only committed to undermining trust in politics and undermining the health standards of Australians today and tomorrow; it is attacking the living standards of the people I represent. They know, however, that I am committed to standing up for Medicare against this government.