Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on a matter of public importance, introduced to this chamber by our colleague Senator Wong, to discuss a plan to fix Australia's hospitals, including more investments in beds, doctors and nurses, ending the Medicare freeze and providing new MRI machines. I thank Senator Wong, very much, for introducing this matter of public importance. I also thank Senator Polley for her contribution to the debate today, which was as dull as it was inaccurate.

I get a chance now to speak genuinely of the coalition's health policy, which is terrific. The coalition is all about raising standards of living. It takes its health policy very seriously indeed, because health policy makes genuine changes to lives. Let me dispel a few myths for the chamber. First of all, let's talk about hospital investment. Federal funding for public hospitals under the coalition has increased from $13.8 billion in 2014, the last year of a Labor government in this country, to $22.7 billion in 2020-21. That is a 64 per cent increase just in the coalition's time in office. There are more hospital services, more doctors and more nurses. That is exactly what this matter of public importance is all about. Under the coalition, more Australians are seeing a doctor without having to pay record bulk billing levels for GPs. At December 2017, bulk billing rates were up to 85.8 per cent, up from 81.9 per cent in Labor's last year of office. That is 21.6 million more bulk billed GP visits. It's 1.9 million more bulk billed specialist visits. It's 6.2 million more bulk billed GP visits in regional and rural areas.

Can we talk for a moment about immunisation rates in this country, which are also at record highs? The number of five-year-olds now being vaccinated has increased from 91.5 per cent, when we came to office, to 94.6 per cent. More children are covered and more children in the community are protected from diseases like mumps, measles and rubella. So successful have we been that the World Health Organization has now verified that Australia has eliminated rubella, a contagious viral illness that can result in tragic miscarriage or stillbirth. And the World Health Organization has confirmed that Australia has also maintained its measles elimination status, after being verified in 2014.

On top of this, the Morrison government has invested $446.5 million in the national immunisation program, just this year alone. From 2018 all 12- and 13-year-old girls and boys will have free access to Gardasil 9. This is the vaccine that will protect them from the HPV virus, and we hope that one day it will make cervical cancer go the way of measles and rubella. That's raising the standard of living. There are life-saving drugs programs. There is an extra $51.8 million for headspace—mental health for young Australians. That takes it to a total of about $148 million for this vital program, across 107 centres around the country. Most important of all, I think, is that we have guaranteed Medicare. Medicare and the PBS are now enshrined in legislation. The Medicare Guarantee Fund will ensure that they are sustainably funded well into the future, because guaranteeing essential services can happen only when the budget is strong.

However, what I am most excited about and most proud of is being part of a government that has listed more than 1,900 additional medicines worth over $10 billion on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. They include drugs like Kisqali, which, without a PBS subsidy, would cost the 3,150 women who have breast cancer around $72,000 per year. Four thousand Australians with chronic pain from spinal arthritis will now be receiving Simponi; without the subsidy, it would cost over $15,000 a year. One thousand Australians with a type of head and neck cancer will receive Opdivo; without the subsidy, it would cost around $50,000. Some 850 Australians with lung cancer will be receiving Keytruda; without the subsidy, it would cost those patients around $188,000. Some 220 Australians with a type of lymphoma will now be receiving Imbruvica; without the subsidy, it would cost around $134,000 per year. Some 1,125 patients with rare types of leukaemia will be receiving a drug called Pegasys; without the subsidy, that drug would cost more than $18,000 per year. And over 6,000 Australians with an inherited high cholesterol condition will be receiving Repatha; without the subsidy, it would cost those Australians around $8,000 a year.

Only a strong economy, strong fiscal management and sustainable fiscal management can deliver those new additional drugs on the PBS. Please hold this in stark contrast to 2011, when Labor announced the unprecedented deferral of the listing of seven medicines, saying:

… the listing of some medicines would be deferred until fiscal circumstances permit.

They are the words used in the 2011-12 portfolio budget statement. That was when the now opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was, in fact, Assistant Treasurer. The Medicare freeze imposed by Labor—not by the coalition, Senator Polley—because Labor couldn't get its economic house in order has been lifted by the coalition government. Make no mistake: on health, education, the NDIS and all the essential services that Australians deserve and expect from a prosperous and successful nation like ours, Labor cannot be trusted. They will promise you the world and then they will hand you the atlas but not before they've slapped a tax on it along the way.

If you want an example of a Labor government's health policy in action, look no further than my home state of Victoria. Three and a half years ago, only four months after being elected, Victorian Labor did its first health backflip. It announced that it would scrap 42 hospital beds from the new Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre which would have provided treatment to thousands of cancer patients. Since that decision was made, over 13,000 people with cancer are estimated to have missed out on treatment in what would have been Peter Mac Private. The decision was entirely based on Labor's ideological opposition to private health care and has cost Victorian taxpayers around $100 million. The 13th floor of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre remains vacant to this day—a state-of-the-art facility lying fallow because a Labor government would rather make a point than save a life. When you see opposition leader Bill Shorten campaigning with Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, when you see Mr Shorten fail to condemn the 'red shirts' rort that misappropriated taxpayer funds to pay for a Labor campaign, when you see Mr Shorten go to ground rather than pass judgement on his Victorian colleagues—21 members of Victorian Labor, including six ministers—who are currently being investigated by the Fraud and Extortion Squad of the Victorian police, when you see opposition leader Mr Shorten and Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews together, please recall the hollow promises that Victorian Labor made before that last election.

The key to a sustainable, generous and effective healthcare policy is a strong economy. What does that look like? I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like 3.4 per cent economic growth; 1.1 million new jobs over five years, with around 400,000 in the last 12 months alone; the female participation rate at record highs; youth unemployment at the lowest levels in a quarter of a century; unemployment at around five per cent; AAA credit ratings from three credit rating agencies; a budget surplus forecast a year early; the smallest deficit in a decade and the smallest since the coalition left office; and an expected return to surplus in 2019-20. Stronger economic growth and much stronger employment growth than anticipated at the time of the 2017-18 budget have driven increases in personal income tax and company tax receipts. Total receipts are now $13.4 billion—much higher than expected than at the time of the last budget—and total payments are $6.9 billion lower than forecast.

Senator Polley wants more beds; I hear more taxes. If you want more doctors, all we hear is more taxes. If you want more nurses, that's more taxes. The politics of envy, the economics of snake oil, promises as hollow as bone—that is all you will get from Labor. That's all you ever get from Labor. The government's health policy is about changing lives. Labor's is about changing their political fortunes. I am certain that those opposite know it was Vladimir Lenin that said, 'A lie told often enough becomes the truth.' Don't Labor have form on lies? On health policy, Labor cannot be trusted.