Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to a question without notice asked by Senator Wong today relating to co-payments for medical services.

Today we saw the next chapter in the saga of dysfunction and chaos that is the Abbott government. What we heard announced this morning by Minister Ley was not designed for the health of our country. It was not designed to improve our health system or to make sure that our doctors are treating patients in a timely way. It was designed for one thing and one thing only. It was designed to save the job of the Prime Minister. Mr Abbott is so desperate to keep his leadership on life support and to save his skin in the next leadership spill that he has made what is, in fact, the fourth policy change in the health financing space since coming into government. This is the only reason Mr Abbott is suggesting changes to the GP tax. He thinks this is the way to keep the support of the backbenchers who are ready—we know from reading the papers—to get rid of him.

Whatever the government tells us today, the truth is that Mr Abbott and this government remain committed to imposing a GP tax on our community. This morning Minister Ley was asked a question—a very similar question to the one Senator Wong asked of Senator Abetz—about whether the policy intent, to impose a GP tax on the Australian community, was a good one. Her words, and I wrote them down myself—I am not reading from a transcript—were, 'The policy intent was and remains a good one.' That makes it very clear. That is a bit different from the answer that Minister Abetz gave to Senator Wong when she asked, 'Does the Prime Minister stand by his claim that his unfair GP tax is "good policy"?' Senator Abetz avoided answering that question, but Minister Ley did answer it. She said, 'The policy intent was and remains a good one.' The Australian people are now warned. We know what is about to happen; we know what is coming down. We know that, one way or another, this Liberal government will impose a payment on Australians attending the doctor. We have heard it called a number of things. It was a 'small co-payment' from some. Then we heard the 'value' description, where we had to put a 'value signal' on going to the doctor

That is gone now today, apparently. But what we have seen is the minister saying that today we will remove the $5 tax on going to the doctor, and we will consult more.

The Senate Select Committee on Health has been consulting too. They have heard that doctors have been spending hours upon hours having to respond to the now four policy positions of this government when it comes to the price of going to the doctor. We have seen the $7 GP tax, we have seen the $20 cut, we have seen the $5 tax and we have seen the four years worth of cuts to Medicare rebates. This has resulted in chaos and dysfunction in the Liberal Party—we have all seen that. But it has also resulted in chaos and dysfunction and work being done in the small businesses that are doctors' surgeries right across this country. We have also seen, though, another impact as well. Not only have we seen doctors having to respond to four different policy positions of the government, we now know that there have been delays in people attending doctors. We know that there have been delays in people undertaking the right level of pathology that their doctors are telling them to do.

We need a policy that has Medicare at its heart. We want a policy that will deliver good quality health outcomes to our community. We want a policy that values the universality of Medicare. We want a policy that Labor will support, and that is a Medicare which is sustainable. It is an absolute furphy to say that Medicare in its current iteration is unsustainable. Rather than quote whole figures, let's start having a look at Medicare expenses as a proportion of GDP. (Time expired)