Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak about the latest crisis that has hit health and this government, and it was very much reflected in an article in today’s Australian by Adam Cresswell, its health editor, the heading of which is ‘Resignation creates health credibility crisis for Labor’. The article reports on the rather scathing resignation of Professor John Mendoza, the Chair of the National Advisory Council on Mental Health. Not only has Professor Mendoza decided to walk out in what the article describes as ‘a sign that simmering dissatisfaction among mental health experts with the government’s performance has reached boiling point’, but the article says that the turmoil is likely to widen to other health sectors amid claims that the trigger for Professor Mendoza’s departure was a report through a Labor source within the past week that the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, had revealed privately that there was ‘no money’ left for further spending on mental, dental or aged-care services.

It is little wonder that we are seeing this from eminent persons like Professor Mendoza. Of course, Professor McGorry gave rather scathing testimony to the COAG health reform inquiry last week. What makes it worse is that Professor Mendoza’s resignation letter is scathing about the way that the Prime Minister not only has made this grand rhetoric in relation to mental health but also is claiming moneys that were spent by the Howard government and much-needed reforms that were made by the Howard government in this area as his own. What does that say? It says a lot more about this Prime Minister. What a low act!

It is little wonder that these comments have allegedly been made by finance minister Lindsay Tanner, given the levels of government debt into the future and given that this government is not prepared to make hard decisions or bring about serious reform. The deficit in the coming year is a massive $40.8 billion—the second biggest since World War II. The budget spending will put further pressure on interest rates. We are borrowing $700 million a week, and that, of course, is $100 million per day. Why are we doing this? Because of the reckless spending of this government—the blow-outs that are occurring as a consequence of the weakening of our border security, the blow-outs to remedy the disastrous pink batts program and the millions and millions of dollars that this government is now spending on advertising, whether it be trying to convince the public about its mining resource tax or trying to run a deceptive and misleading campaign to flog its changes in health reform. It is little wonder that the cupboard is bare. We are now seeing this government trying to raid coffers wherever it can to find money not only to meet promises that it has made but to pay for its reckless spending.

Here we have Minister Roxon. Despite the protestations and the hand-on-heart promises made before the last federal election in relation to private health insurance and what she told us earlier this year, on 12 March, of the proposed changes to the private health insurance rebate, she is now trying to say that the health system needs this money to pay for more doctors, nurses and hospital beds, not to mention new medicines. Despite the promise written by the Prime Minister to Dr Armitage, the head of the Australian Health Insurance Association, saying, ‘No, no—we’re not going to change private health insurance,’ they have tried on various occasions since then to do so. What does that tell you? It tells you that anything that Mr Rudd puts in writing is not worth the paper it is written on, because that was exactly the case with private health insurance. They have tried, they have tried, they have tried and this Senate has blocked that situation. He is now trying to blame the Liberal Party in relation to this money.

They decided: ‘Okay, we can’t raid private health insurance, so what will we do? We’ll go out and we’ll put a tax on tobacco.’ The tax revenue from the tobacco excise increase will be about $5.5 billion over the forward estimates, and the government are supposedly going to use this money to improve health and hospitals through the new hospital grand plan. Minister Roxon is trying to laud this as a world first on preventative health, when really it is all about the money and because they desperately need the money for so many other things. Minister Roxon promised on 15 June that every cent of money raised by the tobacco excise would be directly invested in building a better health system—the usual ‘blah, blah, blah’ about delivering major reforms which, by the by, appear to have been dealt a severe blow as a consequence of the COAG health inquiry.

That inquiry has basically shown that these so-called reforms were cooked up in a very short space of time, despite the fact that Labor have had 2½ years to fix our hospitals. Remember the Prime Minister before the last federal election? ‘We’re going to end the blame game. The buck stops with me.’ Goodness me! We heard rhetoric after rhetoric in relation to the Prime Minister’s hollow promises, and here we are. The hospitals are still not fixed. It is very clear from the plan that the Prime Minister finally put forward that it is going to entrench the powers of the states even more. Despite all the rhetoric and despite all the hype, it is still going to be the states that are in control of the hospital system, and the blame game which this Prime Minister promised to end is going to be more and more entrenched under what this government is trying to set up.

They said they are going to get more money through the excise—although this in itself is going to be an issue given that Australia has one of the lowest levels of tobacco use in the OECD. In the end, it is really hitting those who are seasoned smokers and unlikely to stop. Then the government have decided that they are also going to raid the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. In answers to questions on notice we have been told that, even though the memorandum of understanding that was reached with the pharmaceutical industry has yet to be approved, the view within the pharmaceutical industry is that this government approached the pharmaceutical industry desperate to find money in the PBS and to milk the PBS in the future. That will net another $1.3 billion of much-needed money.

Let us look at other places where the government have been raiding money. I think one of the lowest acts was raiding the $276.4 million in the budget which had been set aside for much-needed residential high-care beds. That has been shunted off to failed state hospitals for longer stay patients, to do the opposite of what the government promised before the last federal election. They promised they would make the transition from hospital to aged care much easier. Instead they are pumping more and more money into the hospital systems to keep people who really should be in residential aged-care facilities in hospitals. Answers to questions on notice show us that they were trying to give the impression that all this money for health was new money. No, it is not new money—a lot of it is recycled money from rebadged, refashioned programs that have been failures, like bringing nurses back into the workforce and redirecting measures for nurses and workforce. Instead of new money, it is all refashioned. It is little wonder that the aged-care sector and other sectors are concerned that the cupboard is bare and therefore Minister Tanner’s— (Time expired)