Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was sorry the member for Petrie was interrupted! He was indulging in this government's favourite pastime of Orwellian bravado and spin about this budget. We have heard the Prime Minister engage in that. Every government takes on the character of its Prime Minister, and the character of this government is one of bravado, puffing out your chest and beating it, and carrying on like a pork chop. Every front bar across the country has got a character like that: they talk a good game but, when you look at the detail of what they are saying, it is another thing.

On 3 March this year, the Prime Minister said, in an answer in question time:

We are determined this government will be, as the former Howard government was, the best friend that Medicare has ever had.

Of course, we know from the last budget and from this budget that they are not the best friend that Medicare ever had. We know that they are very far from it. We had $57 billion worth of cuts to hospitals in the last budget. There was the $7 co-payment. There were four or five versions of that; I cannot remember. The member for Petrie could inform me how many backflips there were on the GP tax. We know that the co-payment, the GP tax, was going to stop a million visits to the GP in its first year of operation, and half a million every year after that—an extraordinary thing. And they wonder why they had a problem with last year's budget! There were the $57 billion worth of cuts to health and education, of course. But we did not really ever get to that. People never got past the co-payment, because they understood what a damaging thing that was. Dr Bruce Groves, a doctor in my electorate—he used to my doctor—wrote to me about the GP tax. He had a 30 per cent drop in attendance just on the announcement of that—a 30 per cent drop in attendance.

What do we have in this year's budget? We have a co-payment by stealth. On page 13 of The Sydney Morning Herald on14 May, in an article headed '"Co-payment by stealth" could push up cost of GP trips, says Owler', the Australian Medical Association president, Dr Brian Owler, talked about the fact that the rebate cuts that are inherent in this year's budget, which are a follow-on from last year's budget, will implement a 'co-payment by stealth'. Again, behind the Prime Minister's language and behind the health minister's language—and behind every backbencher getting up in this place and saying that they are the best friend that Medicare ever had—is this sort of Orwellian bravado of saying black is white, and day is night, and the sky is—whatever the opposite to blue is, Deputy Speaker! That is what is behind this government.

We find an ad campaign on the drug ice, and we see backbenchers out there in their electorates having forums, and some of them making quite interesting claims in the media. They are probably worthwhile things to do; nobody likes methamphetamine and these drugs that have very serious health effects. But what do we actually find in the budget? What do we find behind these forums and behind these ad campaigns? What we find in the budget is—behind the $2 billion worth of cuts in flexible funds; in dental cuts, and preventative health programs—we find $600 million worth of cuts to funding for tackling drug and alcohol abuse, chronic diseases, communicable diseases, and rural health issues. We have backbenchers out there talking about illicit drugs, running ad campaigns and running forums, and what do we find out in today's estimates hearings? When the officials were pressed this morning, we found out that there was a $7 million cut to the Substance Misuse and Prevention And Service Improvement Grants Fund and a further $1.2 million taken from the Substance Misuse Service Delivery Grants Fund. These are the funds that actually treat people in various community services and in health services across the nation. What we have here is a sort of breathtaking hypocrisy from the government—they think that they are going to be able to go around the country raising awareness, while simultaneously cutting services in their budget. I mean it is extraordinary—an extraordinary way of thinking and an extraordinary chutzpah on the government's part. It is extraordinary, Orwellian bravado to be able to go out there and say you are completely in favour of dealing with an issue while cutting the very mechanisms to do it!

It is the same in rural medicine: in the last budget we saw the abolition of Health Workforce Australia, which did health workforce planning; not just for rural areas but around the country. That was very important work. There is still a dental report out there—I tried to FOI it, but it has not made it back to us—that I think, eventually, got tabled. But that was very important work, and what did this government do? They have shuffled that out the door. We had about $70 million worth of cuts to rural workforce programs and scholarship programs in this year's budget, and yet what do we hear from the government? We have a seen a lot of rosy press releases but when you actually dig down to the detail, what you find is compounding cuts over time which desperately affect the way our rural workforces operate, the way regional cities might be able to get doctors, and the way hospitals work.

Again, in these budgets we have seen a confirmation of $57 billion worth of cuts to state hospitals. We know that the government uses this Orwellian language—'the best friend that Medicare ever had'. I do not want remind members opposite but they make all these commitments—and I have got the document here: 'our plan', 'real solutions for all Australians', 'the direction'—and I always like this bit—'values and policy priorities of the next coalition government'. And I look there under 'delivering better health services', which is on page 39 of that document; I will read the subheadings: 'improving the performance of public hospitals at the local levels'—which is all about putting boards in local hospitals; 'improving mental health services', 'funding diabetes research', 'improving access to medicines', 'improving private health insurance'—and they say that they will 'restore private health insurance rebates as soon as they possibly can'—and 'bringing dental into Medicare'. Well, we know what they have done. Never mind the glaring omissions; there is nothing in here about the $7 GP tax, there is nothing in here about the vast cuts to health and education; there are just things like 'bringing dental into Medicare'—and this year, in these cuts, they hack into the Child Dental Benefits Schedule!

How can you on the one hand say in your policy platform that you are going to improve dental and then on the other, in your second budget, after you have hacked into public hospitals and into the doctors, say, 'By the way, we're going to hack into child dental benefits, important things that families rely upon'?

I suppose that this is this government's MO, and I do not think working families across the country will fall for it, any more than they will fall for the glitz, the glam and the PR machine that you can hear grinding away beneath the surface of the backbench: 'Get out there and give the budget a whirl.' On the other hand, we have a divided cabinet and a divided party room. One lot of backbenchers are writing about one view of national security. We had Senator Cory Bernardi on ABC News tonight, just before I started my speech, talking about the creeping and Orwellian expansion of government powers and his concern about that, a pretty brave thing for the senator to do.

So what we have here is a government that has wedged itself on national security and that has engaged in Orwellian bravado in health. There are so many other areas of government policy that are subject to this Orwellian bravado of saying one thing and doing another. It is not good enough, and the working people of Australia will find out about this budget just as they found out about the other one. They will work out its tenor by what it does in the community, and they will inevitably be disappointed by this government.