Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister update the House on how the government has strengthened our health system to ensure Medicare is well placed to support the one in five Australians who are living with multiple chronic conditions?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Bowman. He had a previous career as an ophthalmic surgeon, and his contribution, as a clinician, to healthcare policy and reform in this place is well recognised.

In order to build the world-class health system that Australians expect, you do need reform. You actually do need to challenge the existing status quo and recognise that improvement is a pathway forward. It is a long time since we have had a Labor health minister prepared to do that. It is a long time since we have had a Labor health minister who has said what one previous health minister said, which was:

Without reform … the system will cannibalise itself. Because in health there is a continuous clamour for more and more funding with no regard to where the money comes from.

It is a long time since we had Nicola Roxon prepared to make the appraisal necessary. Labor, of course, in government stripped $6 billion from health, from Medicare and medicines. That is interesting from a Labor government that spent as much as they did. Labor, in opposition, have not come up with one single positive health policy. Actually, they have come up with spending. They have come up with more money on the credit card—money that this generation and the next generation will have to pay for. They have come up with more debt. Such a lazy approach to policy, you have never seen.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Now, let me explain what the coalition are doing and what we have done when it comes to healthcare reform. Underpinned by a spend on Medicare of $23 billion this year, rising by $4 billion over the forward estimates, our Health Care Homes policy has seen general practices and patients around the country putting their hands up to sign up to this revolutionary reform. It was actually presented to Labor in 2009. They had the opportunity to do it and they did not, because they did not do a single thing when it came to health reform—except take that money out of medicines and Medicare.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

We have listed $4.5 billion worth of new drugs in the last three years. We have got agreement, with $2.9 billion over the next two years in public hospitals underpinned by safety and quality, and we are flexible and responsive to new concerns. When people in Australia raised their concerns about the ice epidemic we found $241 million in response for the National Ice Taskforce—for people to go to rehab, to go to detox. That is rolling out across the country to frontline services. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister, personally passionate about mental health, added another $192 million on top of existing funding to reform mental health care so that mental health patients are no longer discharged into a vacuum.

We are a government that absolutely has got it right when it comes to reform in health care, with patients at the centre. The Labor Party remains bereft of ideas, initiatives or imagination.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney will cease interjecting. She was interjecting right through the answer.