Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Why is it important for governments to work together to improve health services, and why are improvements needed?

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

I thank the member for Spence for his question. He's doing such terrific work in the wonderful northern suburbs of Adelaide. He understands that this government has no higher priority than strengthening Medicare. We understand that this requires us to work closely with state and territory governments to address the deep range of challenges facing our healthcare system after nine years of cuts and neglect from those opposite, compounded by three years of a global pandemic. We work closely with all states and territories, Labour and Liberal alike, to finalise arrangements for 50 urgent-care centres that we've committed to deliver this year, delivering care in the community for non-life-threatening emergencies, extended hours seven days a week, fully bulk-billed and, importantly, a much-needed lowering of pressure on our crowded emergency departments. We're also working constructively with states and territories to roll out the Prime Minister's $100 million innovation fund he agreed at national cabinet. We're delivering a single-employer model across rural Tasmania for GP registrars and rural generalists, more nurse practitioners in Western Australia and much more as well.

The contrast between this cooperative approach with state governments and the conflict that the last government was addicted to could not be clearer, and no-one pushed that conflict model harder than the Leader of the Opposition when he was health minister. In addition to his infamous GP tax and his attempt to jack up the price of medicines for every single Australian, he also tried to gut hospital funding. He tried to gut $50 billion from funding to public hospitals. He abolished the agreements we had with states to bring down waiting lists in emergency departments and for elective surgery. It's all contained in a release from the Leader of the Opposition as health minister, titled, I kid you not, 'Strengthening Medicare'. I think he meant 'Strangling Medicare', but autocorrect got the better of him! But in that release he includes perhaps his most extraordinary idea, and I quote:

The Government—

their government—

will also remove the restrictions on state and territory governments that prevents hospital emergency departments charging a … fee for presentations—

his vision of the fantastic triage nurses of Australia out the front of every single hospital emergency department with an EFTPOS machine to collect the Leader of the Opposition's hospital tax. No wonder Australia's doctors overwhelmingly voted this man the worst health minister in the history of Medicare. I table a media release from the Honourable Peter Dutton, ironically titled 'Strengthening Medicare'.