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

I am very pleased to rise to speak on this matter of importance, particularly because it is a signature policy area for Labor. We believe in public health and we have committed to it in every form and with great vigour in every government we have ever formed—and we will need to become a government once again to help this country recover from the damage that is being inflicted right now by this shameless and shameful Abbott government which is determined to tear apart access to public health. In this environment of cuts and austerity that is currently being imposed upon the Australian people by a callous coalition regime, if this government cares at all about health and the Australian people it is time for a debate; it is time for them to listen to some of the experts and some of the evidence and some of the advice that is been proffered. But based on the Liberal Party's policies any conversation about public health care needs to start with a very good warning: the Liberals cannot be trusted with public health care—and neither can their coalition partners the Nationals. Yesterday Labor actually welcomed one comment from the health minister, Susan Ley, which was a long overdue admission that the Abbott government has ripped over $60 billion from public hospital funding. At least now we are part of the way to some disclosure of the truth that they run and hide from every day in this chamber. Every single day they run away from the facts.

At the 2013 election the Abbott government committed to maintaining Labor's funding guarantee for public hospitals. They guarantee that they would support it. They said: 'A coalition government will support the transition to the Commonwealth providing 50 per cent growth funding of the efficient price of hospital services.' That is what they said. And on the day before the election they backed it in with a promise of 'no cuts to health'. Well, we know that that promise was worth absolutely nothing—from a government that is determined to rip out the heart of a health system that has served the nation, and continues to serve the nation, very well. Yesterday Minister Ley also confirmed that she is planning an additional $1.3 billion in cuts to the Australian health system to replace the $5 hike in prescription charges which has stalled in the parliament. Like so much of the government's failed policy objectives, we have cuts, cuts and more cuts.

Labor is deeply concerned about the ongoing uncertainty created by this $1.3 billion in health cuts being planned by Minister Ley. That is in addition to cuts around the Flexible Fund. I acknowledge the comments by Senator Di Natale. He is 100 per cent right. The government is running around the country screaming that we have got an ice epidemic and we need to respond. I agree that we need to respond to drug and alcohol problems in our community—but we do not respond to them by cutting funding for rehabilitation services! That is hardly the right response—yet it is the response of this government. There are 16 flexible funds. It is like the government is playing them off against each other—'Let's tell them the money is going to go, and see who screams the loudest. We might give them a little bit just to keep them quiet.' Going around the country I have heard from health professionals who are almost being given hush money—a three-month extension to keep them quiet for a bit longer. Or it may be a six-month extension. Or if they have a really good friend they might get 12 months. The chaos and the cuts to funding are destroying an entire system.

The disclosure from Minister Ley that confirms this government is not content with a $60 billion cut last year and the $2 billion that they added to that, and another $1.3 billion, just reveals that there is no boundary to how much they will take out of the health system. Make no mistake, with these ongoing cuts the Abbott government is absolutely dismantling universal health care access as this country knows. Labor believes, I believe and Australians believe that we should be able to get the health care that we need—not the health care that Tony Abbott decides he can afford to give you. If you are wealthy, well good on you: 'You can top it up and have the health care that you really need.' But if you are not wealthy, if you are disadvantaged or even if you are working and you get a chronic illness: 'Too bad, so sad, you're just going to get cut out, you'll have to miss out, sorry.' That is not the Australia that was envisioned when we put in Medicare. This government has invented a budget crisis as a cover-up to impose an ideological agenda on an unsuspecting public. Australia will certainly be the poorer and the sicker for it.

Building and supporting a public healthcare network is in Labor's DNA. It is a very central part of being Labor. We stand proudly on our record. From Medibank to Medicare to the NDIS, Labor has delivered and expanded our public healthcare system to provide for all Australians—not just some, not just the wealthy, not just those lucky enough to be born into good health and a wealthy family. For Labor, universal public health care is an inalienable right.

There are people in this country who do not know what it was like before Medicare came on the scene. But we have heard evidence from leading health economists who have been around for a long time. Bankruptcy was what happened to people who were sick and went to a hospital and did not have any money. Their houses were sold out from under them. People chased them around the country to recover the money to repay the debt. That was the reality that faced Australians in the good old days, a reality to which this government, the good old boys, would take us back. Their networks are flush with cash from the sorts of systems that they set up, but they do not care about ordinary Australians, particularly vulnerable and sick ones.

We do not believe that public health care is a privilege to be whittled away by a deceptive government. We do not believe that it should be denied to people who are unable to afford it. Regardless of age, gender, wealth, ability or locality, access to a decent, universal public healthcare system is a non-negotiable principle for Labor. It is a principle we fought for long and hard, to establish, expand and deliver. We fought harder still to protect it from the many efforts of those who would have it dismantled and wind it back.

The hospital funding cuts that are the topic of discussion today are $60 billion cut out of the 2014-15 budget. They will swear black and blue to your face that there are no cuts to health. 'No, they're increasing.' Except that every state government knows that they are trying to manage a budget of reduced funding. Every state government knows how much pressure they are under because this mob, who were supposed to be delivering a fifty-fifty commitment to health in the states, balanced by the money from the federal government that states would get from the GST, said, 'We'll do a partnership; we'll shake hands with you'—until they got to government. Within moments of being here, within a breath of arriving here, they ripped up the national partnership agreements and walked away. And they have tried to back it in with this green paper. They are going to run away from that as well. 'No, it's only a draft,' they say. But in the green paper the possibility—which I would say their actions reveal to be a probability—is that they want to walk away from a joint responsibility with the states for the fundamental access to health care that Australians need.

They are ready to rip up any agreement. They are ready to walk away from any commitment. There is no deception that they will not prosecute if it is in their own self-interest. They are cutting like crazy, but they are not cutting in the right places. They are cutting from the vulnerable. They are cutting from the sick. They are cutting from those who live in lower socioeconomic areas. They are cutting from the bush and trying to keep quiet about it. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in Broken Hill with the Select Committee on Health. We were out there, and the head of the local health district, which runs the hospital, actually sent out an email to his senior executives and told them that, if they were contacted by the Senate Select Committee on Health, they were not to participate. That is a cover-up by any name. That is a gag. That is an attempt to hide the facts from the Australian people. These guys, if they are good at anything, are good at that. They are good at hiding the facts from the people—sadly, in complicity with some of the media who are not telling the truth.

I know this government does not want people to understand what they are really doing, but the Australian people are smarter than the government give them credit for. They have longer memories than the government give them credit for. They actually believed the government when they said that there would be no cuts to health and no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to SBS. They believed you, but they will not believe you again because they will not allow their families and friends to have health care ripped out from underneath them by a shameful government. (Time expired)