Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The National Health Funding Body report for 2013-14 is a very important report in the context of what is happening in health in this country. As a member of the Select Committee on Health, looking at the issues that are affecting ordinary Australians'—and some of the poorest Australians'—access to health, this is a very important issue. And what we have seen and what we have been hearing in relation to funding for health is that unless there is a change to the funding models proposed by this incompetent government then the medical profession's business model will no longer be sustainable. We hear so much from the other side about the sustainability of small business. Yet one of the areas they do not have a clue about is how doctors maintain their small business—because they are a small business, as they keep telling the inquiry. And they say that the imposition of a $7 co-payment, or the imposition of a $5 co-payment, or the imposition of a further extension of the freeze on indexation to their payments, means that their business model is unsustainable. This is a government that claims to understand small business, yet they do not understand the key issues for one of the most important small businesses in the country—the small businesses that keep this population healthy.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What would you know about—

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They either do not know about it or they do not understand. And we have Senator O'Sullivan interjecting again. Well, that gives me the opportunity to bring into play what is happening in regional and rural Australia with health and what the GPs in regional and rural Australia are telling the committee. They are basically saying that they are having huge financial problems, that many doctors will leave because of the government's policies; they will just close up shop and go away and retire. If they are getting towards their later years, they are just going to retire. In Tamworth, which I know very well, as I have been to Tamworth many, many times, the biggest single GP practice, with 15 GPs, is run by Dr Kamerman—not Cameron, but Kamerman, with a K. Dr Kamerman said that they have done the analysis of the effects of this government's policies on their business practice, on their health practice in Tamworth. And what they are saying is that they will have to charge non-concession-cardholders $100 every time they visit the doctor, and they will have to charge concession cardholders $65 each time they visit the doctor, and they will stop bulk-billing.

When you look at national health funding in this country, national health funding has been about encouraging bulk-billing to encourage people who cannot afford to access the doctor to access the doctor. At $100 to go and see a doctor, if Mr and Mrs Smith are crook, and their two kids are crook, they will have to go and get a loan to go and see a doctor in Tamworth. And what have the National Party done?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, a point of order: I do not want to interrupt any legitimate debate here, but, again, I point out that this is a report on the National Health Funding Body, and I would like Senator Cameron to indicate which page of the report he is talking about that has any relevance at all to the subject off his debate.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not even reflect on what has been said there. So, the National Party, again, has been absolutely silent—

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The doormat.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator O'Sullivan, you said it: the doormat. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the same document and, I might say—not that I like doing this—on the same subject that Senator Cameron was talking about: health in Australia has always been something that we as a nation are very, very proud of. And I give thanks to Sir Robert Menzies, who as Prime Minister introduced a lot of the health benefits that we now accept as normal in Australia. I do, again, take up Senator Cameron's point about medical practices being small businesses. It is one occasion on which Senator Cameron is correct; they are small business. But they would be the first to tell you that under the six years of Labor dysfunction in government the cost of running any sort of a business, including medical practices, just skyrocketed and put upward pressure on the small businesses that are medical practices.

Following along Senator Cameron's interpretation of this document, can I simply point out that the federal government did make a mistake on co-payments; that has been conceded. It is something that I have been talking about for some time. Because I am in the Liberal Party, I am able to get up publicly and point out differences of opinion with the health minister on the way that health operates in Australia. If Senator Cameron had done that in the days of the Labor government—if he had had the intestinal fortitude to do it, and I suspect that he would not have—he would have been expelled from the Labor Party. He would have been thrown out of the Labor Party because the Labor Party do not allow any dissension or any public debate. They do what the unions tell them to do. The unions simply tell whichever Labor Prime Minister it happens to be what they want, whether it be in health funding or anything else.

As Senator O'Sullivan said in his interjection: 'What would Senator Cameron know about small business?' As he also said, 'Would Senator Cameron have ever been to Armidale?' I suspect not. Senator Cameron is one of those that lives in the leafy suburbs of Sydney, in the high-rise area, up on the 55th storey of one of these big buildings, where he was the director of one of those big insurance companies—at what cost, we do not know. What would he know about a small business in Tamworth, in Armidale or anywhere in rural and regional Australia?

I am delighted that the minister, Sussan Ley, is seriously looking at a number of issues in the health area. Clearly, the way that the current health system works is unsustainable. If we keep going at this rate, then in the time of our kids and our grandkids there will not be any sort of health system, because it will simply have run out of money. I think that everybody accepts that something has to be done; it is what is right. The National Health Funding Body, whose report we are dealing with, speak generally about the difficulties of funding in health. I give every congratulation to Mr Abbott and Ms Ley for their work in ensuring that Australia continues to have a first-class health system—a health system that really emanated from the days of Sir Robert Menzies. I commend the National Health Funding Body report for 2013-14 to the Senate.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.