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

I will pick up on those words 'someone has to pay'. I will tell you who that someone is: any Australian who has to make an out-of-pocket payment to their diagnostic imaging service or pathologist before they can get access to vital information about their health and wellbeing that will inform their doctor's decisions about how to treat them.

We know that over 70 per cent of medical treatment decisions rely on pathology. The sorts of people who Senator Macdonald thinks should be paying out of pocket before they get their tests were described by Dr Wriedt, the President of the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association, when he described what would happen for a mechanic with a suspected brain tumour. I want to acknowledge Senator Bilyk here, who is a very significant champion for recovery from brain cancer. She does great work in that area. This mechanic:

• Will no longer be eligible for the bulk billing incentive…

• His Medicare rebate will be cut by $62

• To pay a gap of $62 or more, he will have to pay at least $403 up front before being able to claim the Medicare rebate

Can you imagine the scenario, Mr Acting Deputy President? Your doctor says: 'I fear that you have a brain tumour. I want you to go and have an MRI.' Already you can imagine the distress in the family. I am thinking about families right across New South Wales, the great state that I represent. What do they do if they have not got the $403?

The minister today seemed to think it was quite okay. She had no shame at all in saying, 'We will cease this bulk-billing.' The cost will be a human cost in people not being able to overcome the impediment of that up-front fee before they can even get their diagnosis, to say nothing of the ongoing testing that will be part of their journey of health recovery. That is the heartlessness of this particular government and the foolishness of the sorts of decisions they are making about the way in which money is being spent. It is such a false economy to prevent people undertaking the sorts of tests that preventive health constantly recommends to us, like people with diabetes getting their blood tested to manage their illness. We know that this is a vital part of the service, yet this government believes it is a great idea to put another barrier between people and good health and wellbeing.

Dr Wriedt described this particular injustice as a non-evidence-based change. He said, 'This is a cash grab and a co-payment by stealth.' There has been no consultation: 'This is a minister who has been at pains to say she wants to work with clinicians, and yet this announcement has come completely out of the blue with absolutely no consultation.' Dr Wriedt also said: 'In simple terms, this will make it much more difficult for many patients to receive the life-saving level of care they need.' And that is the problem with this government—as if destroying Medicare was not enough, they want to have a go at access to pathology and to diagnostic imaging as well.

I also want to make some comments around education, because we have seen from this government, in the course of the period in which they have governed, a constant litany of comments along the lines of, 'the money does not matter'. Even though they promised before the last election to match Labor's funding dollar for dollar, they changed their mind upon election and they withdrew $30 billion. This tiny amount of money that they have now announced, just days before parliament rises, is an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian public once again—and pretend that they are actually going to invest in education. But people should remember that on 30 and 31 March this year, the Prime Minister revealed what he really thinks about public education when he said that the federal government should continue to fund private education and walk away from government education. This government told people they would match, dollar for dollar, Labor's commitment to the Gonski funding and instead, we find that, the minute they were elected, they walked away from that. We cannot trust this government on education. We cannot trust the Liberal-National Party on education—not for a single day, and certainly not when they have made this paltry offer of some money to assist, at the last hour, having declared day after day that money does not matter. Well, money does matter for the future of our children. The Labor Party believes in investing in every child in every part of the country.

Question agreed to.