Senator RYAN (Victoria) (4:32 PM) —It is a pleasure to join and conclude this discussion after what, I have to admit, I thought were not particularly passionate speeches from members of the government. I am not quite sure if they believed them themselves. After the weekend’s news that we could be seeing another backflip on another great moral challenge for our nation, which was the need for national health reform—‘the buck will stop with me; I’ll fix the problems or we’ll take it over’ (I must have missed that referendum)—what we have from the government is yet more contrived and confected talk of reform. I lost count of the number of times the word ‘reform’ was thrown around by those opposite. They are the little train that could—‘I think I can; I think I can’—as they bandy around the word ‘reform’ in place of actually doing anything.
Those opposite come from a party that simply has no credibility on health. They constantly talk down the Australian healthcare system. The system is not perfect, but every global survey says it is something we can be proud of, because while it is not perfect it is one of the best in the world. But, no, that does not suit those opposite, because you cannot run a scare campaign without beating up people’s fears. Just like in many other fields of policy, the Labor Party wants to justify a particular agenda, so all it does is stoke people’s fears. I remember—and I will talk more about this later—the fears it stoked when case-mix funding first came in.
This Prime Minister has no credibility on health. After all, we do not hear them talking about Medicare Gold too often. I suppose, compared to the deficit they are running now, those unfunded billions of dollars do not actually seem that much anymore. Medicare Gold, the great magic bullet to solve health care for senior Australians, disappeared, sank without trace to the bottom of the harbour, and the Prime Minister never talks about it. But it was Prime Minister Gillard, as shadow health minister, who came up with that abomination of a health policy.
What is this alleged reform we hear about? It is lots of picture opportunities. Nothing has changed at the front end except a few superclinics, chosen by politicians not by health experts, that have actually only taken doctors—often from the same community—into a government funded centre. They are not chosen on the basis of health need; they are chosen on the basis of political need.
We have these Orwellian-named ‘Medicare locals’, as if somehow drawing lines on the map and linking Deniliquin and Seymour, as Senator Troeth outlined earlier, is going to make a single bit of difference to a patient who needs health care and somehow employing more bureaucrats is going to make the system better. I expected nothing less from the former Prime Minister, who never saw a PowerPoint chart he did not like.
Most of all it starts with the conceit that they know best. It is not reform. They have tried to slash private health insurance on multiple occasions. They have tried to slash the rebates for cataract surgery. They have tried to destroy the primary care program that supports people who need dentistry when they have chronic disease, access to physios and even access to psychologists. That is what this government’s agenda is: they want to control how you spend your money; they want to control the health care you get. And God forbid if you invest in your own health care, because this government is going to punish you.
Senator Pratt talked about preventative health—if only! Preventative health to this government is nothing other than taxes and television ads—yet more television ads running on our screens, telling people what to eat; yet more taxes on products that they think people should not eat or drink—in order to plug the budget deficit they have driven. It is not real preventative health; TV ads and taxes are what drive it. At its core, this government wants to undermine choice. They want nothing more than a British style national health service in this country. It is their dream. They have never been able to do it and this is the way they are going about it.
We hear them talk about activity based funding. Well I am from Victoria and I remember the disgraceful and disgusting campaign run by the Labor Party against the Kennett government when that was introduced—and the late Minister for Health, Marie Tehan. The Labor Party vilified the people working on activity based funding and basically accused them of letting patients die. But the true scandal of our hospital system has not started in Canberra; it has started in the states with the decline in quality, with the capture by vested interests under state Labor governments, where people’s health has been put in danger, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland in recent years. The Labor Party does not have any credibility on this and no matter how often they use the word ‘reform’, the Australian people will not buy it.