Senator HUMPHRIES (3:18 PM) —This debate is supposed to be about the answers of the Minister for Health and Ageing to questions about the health care system, but so far it seems to have been an opportunity, firstly, for Senator Hutchins to make a fairly visceral attack on the member for Parramatta and, secondly, for Senator Webber to engage in some special pleading for Western Australia. I would prefer that the Senate focused on the real issues inherent in the minister's answers to questions today, which are the future funding of public hospitals in Australia and the future of the Medicare system as a way of Australians being able to access essential health services both from GPs and in hospitals.

What the government has announced in recent weeks constitutes, I think, the most significant platform of improvements and reforms that this parliament—certainly this country—has seen in a very long time. It has been met characteristically on the part of the Labor Party by a complete wall of deception and misinformation about what those changes represent. We have seen Labor claiming—and I have only this week in the ACT seen literature from Labor members—that under the government's reforms bulk-billing will be available only for concession card holders. We all know that is not true. The government is especially placing resources at the disposal of doctors to encourage them to ensure that their concession card holders are universally bulk-billed. There is nothing in this package that affects the capacity of doctors to bulk-bill other patients who come through their doors. Indeed, measures like the simplification of claims arrangements and the simplification of red tape associated with doctors' practices will mean that doctors have the capacity to bulk-bill more of their patients because it will be administratively easier to do so.

We heard the claim from Senator Webber that Senator Patterson is reducing our commitment to the health system in the payments to Western Australia. What absolute nonsense! The minister has announced $917 million extra for Medicare in this country. How is that a reduction in commitment to the health system? She has announced $10 billion extra for public hospitals in this country with the quite reasonable caveat attached to that spending that the states make some effort to match that funding in light of the fact that we have seen in recent years a number of states take the opportunity of increased Commonwealth funding to withdraw or reduce their own funding to their own services. Then they have the temerity to turn around and blame the Commonwealth for the declining availability of services in the public hospitals and in surgeries. Anybody who cares about the quality of health care in this country would have to see measures of the kind announced by the government as a very important step in the right direction.

I think that what the member for Parramatta was saying is that those who can afford to pay should and the government should target its assistance to those who cannot. The package the government has announced is doing precisely that. It is targeting those people who are concession card holders and providing them with the access to GP services which they are not getting at the moment. Let me remind members opposite that the decline in access to bulk-billing doctors is not a feature of this government; it has been a continuing feature since the earliest days of the Medicare system. It has been going on for a number of years. Access to bulk-billing doctors was declining during the Hawke and Keating governments as well.

What has this government done, not just in this most recent announcement but before that, to improve health outcomes for Australians? We have increased spending on Medicare by $2 billion, from $6 billion to $8 billion. We are investing $560 million in the Rural Health Strategy to target the health of rural and regional Australians. We have committed $80 million to an outer metropolitan program to encourage more GPs into those areas. Around seven out of 10 of all GP services are delivered at no cost to patients. Close to eight out of every 10 GP services to patients aged 65 years and over are provided at no cost to the patient. (Time expired).