Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The fundamental question when we debate the GP co-payment, as we are this afternoon, is whether we want Medicare to be sustainable. Fundamentally, the contribution from those opposite, the modern Labor Party, is that they do not want Medicare to be sustainable. All of those who have looked at this in detail over the years, on both sides of politics, and taken the view that we need to make Medicare sustainable have come to the same conclusion. Bob Hawke wanted to make Medicare sustainable, Dr Andrew Leigh wanted to make Medicare sustainable and the coalition government wants to make Medicare sustainable.

We have heard from Senator Ryan and others about the massive blow-out in costs from 2004 to 2014 and the projected blow-out in costs in another decade from $8 billion to $19 billion to $34 billion. When Andrew Leigh made his comments we were spending around $8 billion. In 2003, he said:

As health researchers have shown, cost-less medical care means that people go to the doctor even when they don't need to, driving up the cost for all of us.

That was Dr Andrew Leigh's position when we were spending less than $8 billion. Dr Leigh had a prescription, and it was the right one. We wouldn't often say that about Dr Leigh, but on this he was correct. He was correct when he came to that conclusion, as was Bob Hawke. So, well before it was blowing out, Bob Hawke and his government identified that they needed to make Medicare sustainable.

The modern Labor Party are now arguing that in fact Bob Hawke did not support Medicare and they are not prepared to accept that he was trying to save Medicare. He was trying to improve Medicare. He was trying to ensure that the position that Andrew Leigh put—that all of us end up paying more and it becomes unsustainable—was the correct one.

Well before we saw these kinds of costs, Bob Hawke said: 'It is quite clear, and I understand there is a very significant blow-out with regard to the Medicare situation in terms of servicing. What needs to be done of course is to ensure that both on the supply side and the demand side that there be some restraint imposed because you can't have a situation, Ray, where you are just going have outlays growing as in the rate that they were.' That was true then and it is truer now. What we have seen since then is massive blow-outs in cost—massive blow-outs when Dr Andrew Leigh said it in 2003 and came up with his prescription; and massive blow-outs since then: $8 billion in 2004, $19 billion now and $34 billion projected in 10 years time.

We hear those opposite, Labor senators, claiming that they support Medicare. That position is not sustainable if you do not have a way to make it financially sustainable. If you do not accept people being asked to make a small contribution to their own health care, with safeguards in place for the most vulnerable to a maximum of $70 per year, then you need an alternative prescription.

As Senator Ryan so eloquently put it, when these costs grow well above inflation and government revenue, then the money has to come from elsewhere, and you cannot just keep borrowing it. Eventually you will have to pay it back. So those of us who believe not in a sustainable budget for its own sake but in a budget that can deliver a sustainable Medicare system, a sustainable NDIS, a sustainable pension system and fund the infrastructure of the 21st century need to come up with ideas of how to fund these things and make them sustainable, and that is what the coalition has done.

Bob Hawke knew it to be true but eventually got rolled by his own party. Andrew Leigh knows it to be true but he has now had to pretend that he has had a lobotomy since coming into parliament and he no longer believes what he knew to be true just a few years ago. The position put by the Labor Party has no substance. It needs to be rejected. That is why things like a co-payment are important. (Time expired)