Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some remarks about Carers Week, which passed not too long ago. I wanted to take the opportunity before the year's end to acknowledge the wonderful work that carers do right across Australia 24/7. Sadly, I must say to these people that in the future, under the vision of the Abbott government, there will be little to celebrate. To highlight the plight of carers in New South Wales and around the nation, I would like to put on record here tonight the case of Lismore locals Cathy and Andy Ridd. In September, the Senate Select Committee on Health held a hearing in Lismore. There are about 2,300 registered recipients of the carers payment in the electorate of Page and Cathy Ridd is one of them. Cathy cares for her husband Andy, who has motor neurone disease or MND, a significant and disabling disease which most often hits the fit and well. Andy is the later stages of motor neurone disease. In a moving submission to the committee, Cathy said:

Andy is a courageous and gracious man, but he is sometimes overwhelmed with fear that he will die in pain and in hospital, rather than peacefully at home because the right services aren't available.

As Andy's condition deteriorates, he is in need of more palliative care services to give him and Cathy the best possible quality of life. There is a community-based palliative care nursing team in Lismore, but it has only one palliative care specialist who, due to a lack of funding, can work only part time. Pain management is key to palliative care in MND cases and Andy's pain management requirements change on almost a weekly basis. Due to the specialist's limited working hours, it can be difficult to arrange regular appointments, certainly not weekly, and the palliative care often falls to a GP. Palliative care pain management is not really a GP's job. They often do not understand the unique requirements of an MND patient and, as Cathy said:

We are constantly running to try to keep up. We are all exhausted from battling the health service to get what we need when we need it.

She told the committee that the system of prioritising people's needs does not take into account conditions that degenerate rapidly. And that is not just Cathy's opinion. She has heard it from health professionals and from funding bodies themselves. She went on to say:

Without funding, we have carers selling their assets to pay for services or trying to do it all themselves and then burning out. The consequence is that their loved one with MND is more likely to end up occupying a bed in the public hospital system, simply because the carer has no other option.

Keeping people out of hospital: is that not what a health system should strive for? The system we have is failing people like Cathy and Andy Ridd and Tony Abbott's GP tax will only exacerbate that problem. Hospitals expect to be inundated by people who will not be able to afford the $7 GP copayment and choose to visit a hospital to avoid it or end up having to visit the hospital because they did not get to their GP in a timely fashion.

The NSW government's own briefing paper prepared in early May for the Premier stated clearly that emergency departments in the state can expect attendances to increase by 500,000 a year, blowing out waiting times at emergency departments at a cost of an extra $80 million annually. You can put carers in that choked hospital queue, but how will they be celebrating Carers Week under that system? Instead of acknowledging the fantastic, unpaid work that these people contribute to our nation day in, day out, there will be little for these selfless people to rejoice about in Carers Week under the Abbott regime. Carers Week will stand as a stark reminder to the rest of the community of Tony Abbott's insensitive attitude to the tireless efforts of our carers under the legislation he proposes to this parliament.

Carers themselves will not have to be reminded; they will live under the hardship of the policy day in, day out. This heartless coalition government has introduced legislation to facilitate the Prime Minister's manufactured budget bottom line. It will slash indexation arrangements for pensions, including the vital carer payment. These cruel cuts will reduce the real value of income support for those providing in-home care, real, loving care which cannot possibly be compared with that available in a hospital ward, in an emergency ward or in the corridor as they wait for a bed. Carers are partners, carers are relatives, carers are friends who give up their time and often their working careers to provide more than $40 billion in unpaid care annually. They are not asking for that much but this government will not give them what they basically need. The $40 billion is an expense that would otherwise be need to be met by our health sector, the aged care and community services sector and ultimately by the taxpayer.

Under Tony Abbott's leadership 2,800 carers in my area on the Central Coast in the seats of Dobell and Robertson face having the value of their carer payment cut by up to $4,000 per year within 10 years. That startling figure comes from a very reliable source, the Australian Council of Social Services. The carer payment went some way to compensating volunteers but Tony Abbott sees fit to treat their work as a monitory unit, an annoying expense to the government which can be pared back to meet a false budget emergency that no-one in Australia believes any more. The Abbott government should be boosting support for carers, not casing them adrift.

The work I do as part of the Senate Select Health Committee has given me great opportunity to hear firsthand from health care providers and the public alike. The depth of concern out there at the very grass roots about where Tony Abbott is taking the country's health system is a very real and pressing concern.

Our Prime Minister intends to cash in on the community, to milk the public, especially the sick and the elderly, for their last $7. Witness after witness at inquiries right across the country have made it clear that the GP tax will be a disaster for families. It will turn people away from seeing a doctor and drive them to overstretch public hospital emergency departments. These changes will see more and more people avoiding health services and not accessing them until their conditions become chronic and require much more extensive, acute hospital treatment. It is hardly a healthy approach to health care.

The health committee has also been told of more hidden in the Abbott budget. Pathology and diagnostic imaging consultations are also going to cost more. Cancer and other chronic disease sufferers will be hit with significant advanced costs for medical imaging and other pathology testing. The abolition of the bulk-billing incentive for X-rays, MRIs, cat scans and ultrasounds will increase the cost for healthcare professionals, who will have no choice but to pass these on to their clients.

The rebate reduction from 95 to 85 per cent will result in cancer patients having to fork out thousands of dollars for their care and diagnostics upfront—if they have it. But what if they do not have it? Evidence to the committee from the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association reveals that patients will be forced to pay $95 upfront for every X-ray, $380 for every cat scan, up to $160 for every mammogram and $190 for every ultrasound. What does that do to a person with chronic illness and the person caring for them?

In my area, Dr Rod Beckwith is a medical director of the Reliance GP Superclinic at West Gosford—and he sees trouble ahead. He says:

When the rebates drop next year, the gap payments that patients will have to make will be out of reach for many Australians.

Worse still, it is often the sickest patients who will pay the highest gaps, because they require the most complex and clinically intensive services. With the safety net ripped away, these extra costs have the potential to bankrupt Australians with complex issues.

They have the potential to bankrupt those who are the most ill, those who are chronically ill in our community. Is that really the place where this government wants to take this nation? It is another one of the hidden traps in the Abbott budget—and it only came to light in the committee's public hearings exactly how dangerous this ill-thought out policy is.

We know the truth. Tony Abbott's GP tax is not just for a visit to the doctor; it is a pathology tax, a diagnostic imaging tax and an MRI tax. He promised no cuts to health. That was a lie. It was a lie to the elderly and to the unemployed—to whom he promised no tax increases. The list of broken promises to the Australian people will only get longer and longer—indeed, sadly, longer than the— (Time expired)