Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate Senator Humphries’s supplementary question. As to why our government will not implement it, I can only quote Kim Beazley’s words on Lateline when he said:

We will not be taking Medicare gold to the next election ...

If that is good enough for Mr Beazley, it is good enough for the government. The ghost of Mark Latham has today emerged in the form of Medicare Gold ‘Mark’ II. Early in July this year, the ALP’s senior national president, Barry Jones, was quoted in the Financial Review as saying that Labor’s aged care policy was only ‘weeks away’. If this is indeed the agreed policy of Labor Party luminaries, I think that all aged people in Australia will be very sadly disappointed.