Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A worthy note! I rise today to talk about how the Turnbull government's reckless mismanagement of our healthcare system is hurting real Australians. The issue I want to focus on today regards the unacceptable delays in the processing of Medicare rebate claims.

I am receiving, like many members on this side, lots of correspondence from constituents about the impact these delays are having. Until recently, customers could walk into any Centrelink or Medicare office with a receipt from their doctor and have their rebate processed on site. Now it is sent to a central location, maybe hundreds or thousands of kilometres from where you are, to be processed along with tens of thousands of other clients. Many people in my electorate have told me this processing time can take weeks, even months. Sadly, the people who are lodging claims in person rather than electronically are predominantly older Australians and, indeed, those who are on low or fixed incomes who can least afford to bear the sorts of wait times that they are now faced with.

This week I received an email from a constituent living in Shortland who has been waiting almost seven weeks to have her rebate claim paid. Sadly, she is not the only person in this situation. In fact, I understand the rebate queue is now in excess of 60,000 claims and it can take up to 10 weeks for these claims to be processed. That is tens of thousands of people who now face potentially very difficult decisions about what they are going to buy or do in the period before their rebates are paid, as they will not be able to pay bills on time. For some, this has meant forgoing prescriptions. For others it is a decision about whether to get their car serviced or pay a bill on time.

What some on the other side might not understand is that this is not just a matter of minor annoyance or irritation. While some of us may not notice $50 or $100 that takes a bit of time to be put back into our bank account, there are of course millions of Australians who are not so lucky. Alarmingly, another constituent told me that, after incurring significant specialist costs for much-needed ongoing treatment he is receiving and suffering long delays in the rebate payment, he is now forced to consider whether there will be continuation of that treatment in light of the financial strain the constant delays are causing him. The botched centralisation is indicative of the value that the Turnbull government places on our public health system. The philosophy of universal health is constantly under attack. It is par for the course for this government that it has spent most of its tenure attacking and destabilising universal health, whether it is talk about privatisation, co-payments or attacks on bulk-billing with the Medicare freeze. It just goes on and on. If Malcolm Turnbull had learnt any lessons from the last election, he would put a stop to these delays today. (Time expired)