Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will be brief. I rise to speak on the Medicare Guarantee Bill 2017, but let's be very clear that this is a bill about nothing. It is a Seinfeld bill. It does nothing. It gives no effect to supporting Medicare. This is a headline without any substance. It is all tip and no iceberg.

No-one is a bigger supporter of Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the funding of our hospital system and our universal health care than the Australian Greens. We understand how critical it is that every Australian citizen gets access to world-class health care. Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, our public hospitals—they are all the foundation of our universal health system. They are critical tools to provide high-quality health care to every Australian. They need to be protected. Our system is not perfect, and we do need more investment and better targeting. We need to ensure that there is better access to our universal healthcare system and we will continue to strive to achieve those outcomes.

But you would think that, given the audacious name for this bill, it somehow achieves some sort of guarantee for patients to achieve those outcomes. The truth is that this bill does nothing. It strikes me as something that was developed out of one of the episodes of The Hollowmen. You have got a problem where the government is not trusted to be able to deliver health care for Australians. They are seen as a government that does not support Medicare and is prepared to cut funding for our universal health system. So what do we do? We have got to try to come up with a solution. Rather than actually addressing the substance of the problem confronting the government—that we need to see greater investment in our universal health system—someone from the brains trust in the government has decided: 'I know. What we'll do is the money that we park into consolidated revenue we'll call something that somehow gives the impression we're doing something to protect that money from further cuts.' It does nothing of the sort.

The truth is that, if this government wants to cut funding for health care, it can do it at the stroke of a pen. The so-called 'Medicare Guarantee Fund' offers absolutely no protection. Let's remember Medicare funds only a small proportion of all healthcare costs. Our hospital system, our pharmaceutical benefits system—all of the things that contribute to universal health care—are only funded in small part by the Medicare levy, so offering the Medicare Guarantee Fund offers nothing but window dressing. We know that the reasons for this bill are purely political. We know that the government was slammed during the last election campaign for its lack of support on Medicare. It must be said it was quite a crass campaign. The notion that the government was going to privatise Medicare got some traction and, of course, given the government's record, people simply do not trust them.

But, again, rather than dealing with the substance, what we saw was a response that is all about window-dressing. When asked at Senate estimates recently about how this bill actually guarantees Medicare, we simply could not get any answers from the government. They simply could not answer the simple question that was posed to them, which was: 'Just explain how this Medicare Guarantee Fund protects Medicare? If the government wants to cut funding for health care, how is it that the establishment of this fund prevents that from happening?' No answer. There was absolutely no answer. So I think what we have here in is an example of politics trumping decent policy.

We are not going to get in the way of this bill. We think that, ultimately, if the government wants to bring in legislation that it thinks somehow will allow it to claim the mantle of offering some sort of protection to Medicare, well, we will back that in. But, let us remember: when you are a government that has slashed funding for health care; when you have frozen Medicare indexation over a number of years, meaning that billions of dollars are being ripped out of the health system; and when you are a government that has tried to introduce Medicare co-payments but have been thwarted by the Senate, what you need to do is look at the substance of what you are doing, not offer hollow responses like the establishment of this bill. I think that the government needs to go back to the drawing board and recognise that, ultimately, what Australians want and what they deserve is a strong commitment—in practice, not just in spin—on how we are going to deliver world-class health care for Australians. The government might believe that Australians are gullible enough to think that this measure speaks to some sort of commitment, but we all know that most Australians are much, much smarter than that.