Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to make a contribution to the MPI today, following on from the contributions of Senator Cameron, Senator Polley and you, Madam Acting Deputy President Hume, and to debate the 'plan to fix Australia's hospitals, including more investment in beds, doctors and nurses; ending the Medicare freeze; and providing new MRI machines across Australia'—a statement packed with assumptions and assertions about the state of play. I will pick up on something that Senator Cameron said in the last part of his contribution, which is that we do have a fantastic health system in this country. I don't agree with where he went after that, which I'm sure he is not surprised by, but it is the case that certainly in my home state of Tasmania, while there is always going to be room for improvement when demand increases, we do have a system that is catering more for Tasmanians.

Senator Cameron is right: when you move out of metropolitan areas, when you go out of the highly built-up and more populated areas, access to health services is harder to come by, especially for specialist services. That's why in Tasmania, under the guidance of the fantastic health minister, Michael Ferguson, we are seeing a terrific reform of the broken health service down there, the one that was left in tatters. I will come to the record on that and compare the pair, looking at how things were in 2013, only four short years ago, and how they are today under the Hodgman Liberal government, which has invested a huge amount in health services in that state.

Going to those assertions in the MPI around investments in health and how things are structured and situated in Australia, we need only recall the 'Mediscare' campaign that we saw at the last federal election, in 2016. I recall standing at the pre-poll booth at Rosny Park in southern Tasmania, and a fellow came up to those of us who were standing at the pre-poll booth and he was holding one of those fake Medicare cards and he was outraged. But here we are almost three years on and, of course, Medicare was never privatised. It was a Labor lie. It was one of those scare campaigns that Labor wanted to whip up—and did so successfully, unfortunately. They fooled a great many Tasmanians, and indeed Australians, into thinking that somehow the government was going to privatise the entity that provides for public health, Medicare. It was never going to happen.

That's why this so-called plan that has been put forward by the Labor Party is something that you can't bank on. It is something that we have to interrogate closely. I think the best way to do that is to check the facts and see how things stack up here in Australia—federally and right across the country—and, as I said before, when we examine the situation in my home state of Tasmania. As I understand was pointed out by Senator Hume a little earlier on in this discussion, the amount of federal funding that has been provided to public hospital services under this government has increased by a huge amount—from $13.3 billion in the financial year 2013-14 to $23.4 billion in the year 2020-21. That is a 76 per cent increase in funding to public hospital services. We should remember that the administration and delivery of public health services are the domain of the states and territories. Of course, the Commonwealth, through the various partnership agreements, through the GST and through other funding streams, does support the state and territory governments to administer and fund those services.

We have the five-year hospital funding agreements where we are seeing an increase of funding by $30.1 billion from the year 2020-21 to the year 2024-25. That is a massive increase, taking it from $100 billion to $130.1 billion. This agreement has been signed up to by six state and territory governments—Western Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory, South Australia, the great state of Tasmania and also New South Wales. That's three Labor and three Liberal governments, meaning that there is bipartisan support for the amount of funding that is being provided to states to administer their much-needed health services. In the case of Victoria, one would assume that the Andrews government is playing politics, holding things up and not signing up in the lead-up to a state election. I can't think what other reason there would be. It is very disappointing for the people of Victoria to be missing out on that much-needed funding to secure the future of their health services.

You only have to consider those facts—the support for Medicare, the numbers related to bulk-billing and, of course, all of the statistics and the case studies around the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—to understand how much is being invested in public health and in providing services and medications that are so very much needed by many, many Australians.

Senator Hume was talking before about drugs like Orkambi to help sufferers of cystic fibrosis. A 12-month period would cost a patient $250,000 without the subsidy that the PBS provides. That's a fantastic initiative that our fellow Australians contribute to through paying their taxes that enable these people to access their medicines at an affordable rate—a far more affordable rate than $250,000 a year. That drug, like so many others, sat on that list for so long before it was approved to be provided under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

On bulk-billing, as has already been stated, record numbers of people are being provided bulk-billing for health services—86.1 per cent for the 2017-18 financial year, the highest bulk-billing rate at any time since Medicare came into existence. The numbers are that 154.7 million GP services were provided across the country and 133.2 million were bulk-billed. So, on these stories about people being denied access to bulk-billing and doctors jacking up fees, this bears out that record numbers of people are being able to access this service. Again, it points to another Labor scare campaign.

On support for Medicare, as Senator Hume also pointed out, the Medicare freeze which was put in place by the Labor government in the year 2013 is being removed by the coalition, by this government, the one we've heard such nasty things about this afternoon. Huge amounts of funding are being provided to Medicare. In 2017-18, it was $24 billion. In the next financial year, 2018-19, it will be $25 million. It will be $26 billion in 2019-20, $27 billion in 2020-21 and $29 billion in 2021-22.

These are some facts that have been seen around the country about how funding is being administered. It puts paid to the claims that are being made by those opposite that funding support isn't there, that we aren't investing in health and that it's at breaking point. Indeed, Senator Cameron made the point that we do have a fantastic health system, a claim that I believe he is right on.

I will turn to Tasmania briefly, though. Talking about small government, as Senator Cameron did, it was the Australian Labor Party in Tasmania that wanted to privatise the Mersey Community Hospital. They wanted to outsource it. They didn't want it to be supported by government. It was the Tasmanian Liberal government, the Hodgman government, and the coalition government here in Canberra that engineered a deal to make sure that that health facility remained part of the statewide health network, where we are seeing great reforms and where people in regional communities are getting access to the health services and specialist services they need, with the support of the coalition government here in Canberra.

Some of the statistics I put on the record before around access to health were provided during the 2018 Tasmanian state election campaign. They show a contrast to where things were back in 2014, when the Hodgman government came to power after the Bartlett-Lennon-Bacon-Giddings-McKim government had fallen. In the year 2014 there were 15,315 elective surgeries performed in our public health system. At the end of 2017 there were over 19,000 services—that is a massive increase. We had 3,375 full-time-equivalent nurses; we now have 3,630. The number of ambulance ramping hours at the Royal Hobart Hospital—our capital city hospital—has dropped by 25 per cent. This is under the management and guidance of the Hodgman government and the fantastic health minister, Michael Ferguson.

So to claim that things are not being supported and are not being appropriately funded is patently wrong. In the case of Senator Polley's comments that these are Liberal cuts to health: she is wrong. The cuts they talk about are a result of Labor's funny money. The promises they made in the past were ones they could never have delivered on, because they were never elected. They didn't receive the mandate to fund the promises they made. It's all lies with Labor when it comes to funding of health. (Time expired)