Mr ROBERT BROWN (1:10 PM) —I appreciate the opportunity to speak during the second reading debate on the Health Legislation Amendment (Health Care Agreements) Bill 1998 . I know there have been claims made that there is no crisis in Australia's health system. Let me refute that. I certainly would not suggest that the situation in the Australian health system would necessarily place it among the health systems of the developing world. But, in terms of the health system that the Australian people have come to expect and the health system that this country can afford, there is no question at all that the Australian health system is in crisis.

The member for Dobell (Mr Lee), the opposition spokesman on questions of health, has drawn attention, as last night did the member for Bradfield (Dr Nelson), speaking for the government, to situations where, for example, hospitals are identified as bypass hospitals—not because they are providing bypass operations but because the ambulances are told that they have to go past them, bypass them, because there is no room in those hospitals to take emergency cases. We have had examples where, in the process of people being shuffled and shuttled from one hospital to another, their health circumstances have seriously deteriorated, and there have been cases where it has become so serious that death has eventuated. There are other examples as well where after serious operations people are left lying on trolleys in hospital corridors. We might find, and we will find, worse examples of health and hospital care in the developing countries of the world, but Australia should be able to apply sufficient resources to make sure that our 18 million Australian citizens have access to top quality health care and hospital care.

Of course, that was the purpose initially of the Whitlam government when the old Medibank was introduced. We well recall the very firm, unqualified promise by the leader of the coalition at that time, Mr Fraser, when prior to the election in 1975 he said, `We will maintain Medibank.' No qualifications, no ifs, no buts—`We will maintain it.' There were seven changes in eight years, and it destroyed it. I well recall, as everybody else should recall, that when we came back into government in 1983 there were over two million people in Australia who were not covered by any sort of health insurance. You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, as do all of my colleagues, that there were mothers and fathers who were not covered, who did not take their kids for necessary medical treatment at the time and whose kids now are carrying the scars of that lack of treatment and will carry the scars of that lack of treatment until they die.

We were not prepared to accept a situation where that prevailed, so we said in 1983, `We are going to reintroduce it, we are going to restore it and we are going to seek to lock it in.' We called it Medicare. We saw before the last election the present Prime Minister (Mr Howard) emulating the comments of Mr Fraser, when the spokespeople for the coalition said, `We will maintain Medicare.' There have been no major changes to the structure of it, but they have ripped the heart out of it. `Oh no, we will maintain Medicare,' they said, `but where the funding is coming from is another question.' We know, for example, that, in addition to the demands that were put on the states in 1996 with the first budget of the coalition, when the states were told that they would be required to help the Commonwealth to the extent of $1.6 billion, we had $800 million ripped out of the public hospital system, we had $400 million taken from the dental health program and we had $479 million taken from the mental health and the palliative care programs.

The present Commonwealth government, the coalition government, is saying to the 18 million Australians, `We are packing this money back into the system. We are going to increase in real terms the funds available to the health and hospital system by 15 per cent over the next five years.' The only reason these funds are going in is that the system was on the verge of collapse as a result of the funds that were ripped out. What this coalition government now proposes to put back into the system is the money it took out.

I urge people in the Australian community to understand that, and I would like in this connection to remind everyone that the 1996 Australian of the Year, Dr John Yu, a former head of the Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney, made the following comments. These expressions of concern are not just coming from us. Dr John Yu said:

I am not sure how well briefed the Prime Minister is. . . . I'm certainly disappointed that Dr Wooldridge does not have a better understanding of what's happening.

Dr John Yu is not talking about some backbencher on the government side; he is not talking about some Liberal Party branch member out in the mid-west of New South Wales. He is talking about the Prime Minister of Australia and the member of the government who has primary responsibility for the administration of government programs in relation to health and hospitals and in relation to something that we still will continue to call Medicare, even though the government is trying to get away from that word. John Yu also said:

Public hospitals . . . deserve a better deal.

Yes, they do. We have pre- and post-operation cases lying on trolleys in hospital corridors, kids being shuffled from one hospital to another because there is no room for them, mothers in anguish taking their children into hospitals and being told to go somewhere else and mothers being told to take their kids out of the hospital before the kid should be released from the hospital.

You know who is causing this, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I want to let everyone know who is causing it. It is being caused by this coalition government—a coalition government which has an ideological fix on anything that is private and an ideological fix against anything that is public. So they are happy to support all of the private health arrangements. You will recall that they did, for example, put in place a subsidy for people to pay private hospital fund fees. One would have thought that those people who were members of private hospital funds would have expected to benefit from that. Did they? Of course they didn't. The fees now, even taking into account that rebate, are higher than they were when the scheme was introduced. The sum of $1.7 thousand million has been spent on that, and it has not worked. In New South Wales there are 400 people leaving private health funds every day. The coalition government's scheme was supposed to halt the loss to the private health funds and to reverse it. People would say, `Here is a subsidy for me to go into a private health fund.'

The situation is compounded by the fact that people in private health funds have themselves gone through this experience. We all know that this is true. You can have a public Medicare patient in a public hospital occupying a bed alongside a private patient for the same ailment, for the same operation, with the same doctor, with the same services, and at the end of that treatment the public Medicare patient leaves that hospital not owing one cent. The private fund hospital patient will leave that hospital owing in some cases hundreds of dollars, despite the fact that the private hospital patient has probably for decades being paying into a private fund. I would say that after one experience of that kind the private fund member would say, `Thus far and no further. Why should I pay my Medicare levy through my tax and in addition to that pay private health funds, and in the face of that leave the hospital where I occupied a bed alongside another person who had the same ailment, who had the same operation with the same doctor and who received exactly the same services owing hundreds of dollars and the Medicare patient comes out owing not one cent.'

I am very conscious of the time constraints. I have been prevailed upon to cut my remarks short. There are plenty more points that I would welcome the opportunity to make, and at some time in the future I am going to take the opportunity to make them. But my colleague Michael Lee, the member for Dobell, carries this fight right out into the national community, exposes the deficiencies of this government, puts up the alternative policies and programs and says, in effect, to 18 million Australians, `We will not tolerate the dismantling of the public health and public hospital system. We will fight them right to the line.' Within the next 12 months there is going to be another election, and we will take them right to the line, and this is one of those issues on which we will win.