Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How does the budget deliver on the government's commitment to improve health care after nearly a decade of cuts and neglect, and how does it compare to previous budgets?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for his question and for the contribution he's already making to this area as a qualified emergency physician. He knows that at the May election Labor promised to strengthen Medicare and cut the price of medicines, and this week's budget delivers on that promise. Today, legislation passed the parliament to deliver the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. It's really not that hard to deliver to the Australian people what you said at the election you would deliver. This budget could not be more different—

Opposition members int erjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left! When there is silence in the House question time will continue. There is obviously far too much noise in the chamber. I'm issuing a general warning to all members, and I will say again that I wish to hear the questions and the answers in silence.

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget cannot be possibly more different than the first budget that the Leader of the Opposition delivered as the health minister back in 2014. His first budget, after famously promising there would be no cuts to health, was the most spectacular betrayal of Australian voters on health policy in Australian history; the most savage and heartless cuts to health care in this country that anyone can remember, all cooked up by the Leader of the Opposition. He walks away!

Our first budget delivers the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the history of the PBS. His first budget tried to raise the price of every script for every patient by as much as $5 for general patients. He tried to cut Commonwealth funding to public hospitals by $50 billion. That's jaw-dropping! $50 billion! He was so proud of it that he arranged for a special glossy brochure to be printed to boast about it to the Australian people. And famously, or infamously, he tried to slug every single Australian patient $7 for every single visit to a GP: pensioners, concession card holders. And when we blocked that vandalism in the Senate, he froze the Medicare rebate for six long years instead—a policy doubled down on by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition when she was the health minister.

He cut funding to states for elective surgery. He abolished Health Workforce Australia, seeding the workforce crisis we have in the sector today. He abolished the Preventative Health Agency, which was perhaps no surprise given the attitude he brought to our world-leading reforms in plain packaging for tobacco. And he has never admitted he was wrong. He has never once admitted that he was wrong. No wonder even Tony Abbott thought he was too radical to be health minister and sacked him after 15 months. Just 15 months in the job. No wonder Australia's doctors famously voted him as the worst health minister in Australian political history.