Senator McLUCAS (1:53 PM) —Labor is opposing the Health Legislation Amendment (Medicare) Bill 2003 because, through the bill and through the so-called MedicarePlus package, the Howard government has sought to undermine the fundamental nature of Medicare with its ideologically insistence on inserting means testing and differential treatment into our health system. Medicare was designed to work as a universal health insurer that delivers health care benefits based on health need, not on one's income. Medicare was designed as a universal and progressive insurance system that fairly takes account of Australians' different financial circumstances. The bill before us today seeks to change those basic fundamentals of Medicare.

This government is seeking to destroy the fair, simple and universal Medicare that all of us in this chamber know that Australians understand and value. Labor and all Australians know that the Howard government, and the Prime Minister in particular, has always wanted to dismantle Medicare. We have heard those quotes in this chamber on many occasions. Independent and minor party senators who are considering doing a deal with the government over this bill need to ensure that the very first principle of Medicare—that is, its universality—is preserved. I urge them to focus on that.

It is interesting, though, to look at what the government has been doing during the time we have been considering this bill. If Minister Abbott and the Prime Minister are confident about the effectiveness of this legislation, why have they censored the release of bulk-billing figures that have been routinely provided by the Department of Health and Ageing to the Senate committee process? We saw stark evidence of this political interference when earlier this month Department of Health and Ageing officials were unable to provide the estimates committee with an adequate explanation for the ministerial and departmental decision to censor electorate data that would reveal the full and true extent of the health crisis facing Australia and its people.

If the government is so confident that this legislation—this package—contains the keys to Pandora's box on health, why, after more than two years of releasing bulk-billing and out-of-pocket cost information by electorate, does Minister Abbott want it stopped? Mr Abbott has said that this package would improve bulk-billing rates. If that is so—and there is no evidence that that is the case—then why would he shut down scrutiny of the bulk-billing rates? Mr Abbott has effectively locked Pandora's box until at least next November—and I bet it is after the election—because there is nothing in this package, with its sham safety net, that will address the plummeting bulk-billing statistics, particularly in my home state of Queensland, and everybody knows it. One week ago the political editor of the Sunday Mail, Mr Darrell Giles, put it this way:

The article states:

Mr Abbott does not want electorate by electorate scrutiny of his bulk-billing rates. That is why he shut it down. If this legislation to implement the Howard government's sham MedicarePlus safety net is actually going to achieve a turnaround in bulk-billing rates, as the government would have us believe, then why the secrecy? It seems that the government, which thinks nothing of spending $74 million over four years on the administrative arrangements as part of the MedicarePlus package, thinks it is dreadful that it is going to spend $100,000 keeping the community informed about what is occurring electorate by electorate with bulk-billing rates. We can apparently afford to spend $74 million out of a $264 million program on administration alone—not on health care but on administration—but we cannot spend $100,000 to provide the community with information about bulk-billing rates in their regions. Those bulk-billing rates, I have to say, are the most effective key performance indicators for reliably informing the community of the true state of bulk-billing and out-of-pocket costs. Let us be very clear: the reason the government has thrown a cloak of secrecy over the figures is simple—this package does not contain measures that will address the present health care crisis.

The bill is ideologically driven rather than being a serious attempt to support Medicare. Minister Abbott is trying hard to keep the community in the dark, as this government is trying to do about so many other things, like sugar, intelligence on Iraq, military justice and the true future cost of higher education. This minister is trying to keep our community in the dark about what the real electorate-by-electorate bulk-billing rates are. The community is not buying Minister Abbott's MedicarePlus snake oil; now the minister is also acting to hide the truth from the community. Keeping information from electors is a sure sign of a government in trouble. Providing one's citizens with access to quality health care is an elementary component of governance in any country. This government cannot step in, dismantle a fair system through neglect, replace it with an unfair, two-tiered system, and then attempt to hide the results of its actions before the election and expect people to be happy about it. Labor opposes the core of this bill—the so-called safety net proposal. The bill in fact proposes two safety nets—two very different qualifying thresholds.

Debate interrupted.