Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Let me be very clear: this is a government that just cannot be trusted. This is a government whose words mean little and whose actions bear almost no resemblance to its words before the election. Solemn commitments to the people of Australia were casually tossed aside once it got into power—none more so than the now infamous pledge that there would be no cuts to pensions, no cuts to health and no cuts to education.

What happened? The government went on to break every single one of those promises in their very first budget. We have learnt that this Abbott-Hockey-Morrison government are more interested in protecting multinational companies—instead of making them pay their fair share of tax—than they are about protecting the health of the Australian people. The government are more interested in preserving superannuation perks for very high income earners than fulfilling their commitments on hospital funding.

Today I would like to look at the axe that the government has taken to health funding since this promise was made. It is a shameful record indeed. One of the fundamental duties of a government is to look after the health of its people. But this government has been more concerned about destroying Medicare than looking after the health of Australians.

Again, in this place, we have heard Senator Abetz deny the reality of his very own budget papers, which clearly state that the government has callously ripped billions of dollars from hospital funding. And this is no small matter. In fact, Mr Abbott's $50 billion cut to Australian hospitals is equivalent to sacking one in three doctors, sacking one in five nurses and shutting down one in 13 hospital beds. At a time when the ageing population will require a robust health system, this government is doggedly set on bringing Australia's health system to its knees.

The fact that those opposite can stand there brazenly and say with straight faces that there have been no cuts to health is absolutely outrageous. Make no mistake: this is a broken promise. The government promised that there would be no cuts to health and then ripped out $50 billion from hospitals. Not only that but this Abbott government also set out to destroy the fine tradition of universal healthcare with the GP tax mark 1, mark 2 and mark 3. When the second GP tax was proposed the government denied that it would have any impact on bulk-billing.

The area where I live, on the north-west coast and the west coast of Tasmania, is home to some of the poorest communities in the country, with 85 per cent of doctor visits bulk-billed. People there are very vulnerable to healthcare cost hikes like the government's various GP taxes. So I went out to local doctors to get their perspective on what this meant, and the results of a survey that I sent to doctors told me a very different story from what the government claimed. I got a great response to the survey, with responses from doctors in close to 75 per cent of practices. And the results were extremely clear: in fact, close to three-quarters of north-west coast and west coast doctors believe that bulk-billing would decrease or end completely if the government's proposed Medicare changes were to proceed. Not only that, but they told me that the government's blatant attacks made no financial sense whatsoever, as they would discourage people from visiting the doctor until their problems got even worse and again more expensive to the health system.

So it is clear that this is not a government that is willing to invest in the health of the Australian people and that this is a government that has blatantly broken its promise that there would be no cuts to health. But that is just one broken promise among many.

In fact, after only one budget, the government have managed to break almost as many promises as they have kept, with a tally of 14 promises broken to 16 that they have delivered. While I would like it to be different, I suspect that we will see the broken-promise tally rise again tonight. But, whatever we see tomorrow, those opposite have already shown their true colours. They have proven that they will do anything they can to take down Medicare. They have shown little regard for expert opinion. And they have demonstrated that they are willing to put at risk, for their own twisted priorities, the health of Australians—the health care of people who are the most vulnerable in our society: those who can least afford it. But the health system cannot afford it either. It makes no sense whatsoever to reduce the healthcare provisions to people and to then have the back end of hospitals deal with the problems. (Time expired)