Choosing Medicare, choosing health
Here’s Bill Shorten’s speech at the Brisbane launch of Labor’s election campaign. Under Malcolm Turnbull and the hard-right Liberals we know Medicare will never be safe from privatisation. Cutting the public health system is now, has always been, and will always be part of their DNA. Labor will save Medicare. Full stop.
Bill Shorten put the case as succinctly as possible: we choose health.
“What started as an 8 week marathon is now a six-day sprint,” said Shorten.
“Save Medicare.”
“And in saying that, I’d like to welcome two of the great architects of Medicare, Bill Hayden and Dallas Hayden.
“It has been an 8 week marathon but now a six-day sprint.
“Six days — and one message to drive home….
“Friends this is the message we will carry everywhere we go.
“Save Medicare has never meant more, because Medicare has never been under greater threat.
“Every parent knows the feeling, when your child has a cough that sounds like it’s getting worse or a persistent fever that won’t go away and a mounting temperature.
“In that moment, you’d give up everything, you’d sell the shirt off your back and the roof over your head
“But because of Medicare — you don’t have to.
“Every Australian can get the care they need, when they need it.
“Australians take pride in Medicare — and what it means.
“It’s at the heart of our distinctive character, our egalitarian tradition of the fair go.
“But the Liberals have spent the last three years trying to hollow-out Medicare…cutting it, taxing it, eating away at its very foundations…
“Forget Mr Turnbull’s rhetoric — look at their record.”
“Seeking to tear Medicare down, brick by brick, piece by piece.
“And — last week — when we exposed their hidden agenda for privatising Medicare, they panicked.
“Now they’re trying to pretend the $5m privatisation taskforce was just a social club.
“That the Productivity Commission review is just a thought experiment,” he added.
But while Malcolm Turnbull can backtrack and attempt to find cover for his privatisation plans, Labor will never let the public forget his truest aims.
“Forget Mr Turnbull’s rhetoric — look at their record,” said the Labor leader.
“Massive cuts to Medicare — and a massive hit to the cost of living for every Australian family.
“Cutting bulk-billing, so 14.5m patients pay more to see a GP.
“And a typical Australian family with two kids, has to pay an extra $400 a year and that’s providing the child doesn’t have a serious illness.
“Increasing the price of medicine, so Australian will pay more every time they need a prescription
“And imposing new upfront fees and charges for scans, for blood tests, x-rays and diagnostic imaging.
“In our country — in our Labor Party — we don’t outsource the responsibility we owe to our fellow Australians.”
“In fact — from this Friday, from the 1st of July, Mr Turnbull’s cuts to Medicare will mean new fees and charges:
- $100 for a mammogram
- $300 for a mum being diagnosed with breast cancer
- Over $1000 for an Australian to deal with melanoma
“We’re not talking about the common cold here or man flu — we are talking about Australians in the fight of their lives.
“When you pay taxes your whole life, most Australians don’t ask alot from the government, they don’t ask for the corporate tax cuts, but they do expect having paid their Medicare levy, having paid their taxes, that they will have a Prime Minister in Canberra who prioritises the healthcare of Australians over giving the big banks a tax cut.
“That’s what we will give Australians.
“Friends, it is as simple as this.
“If it’s not affordable, if it’s not accessible, if it’s not available to everyone — it’s not Medicare.
“The Liberals have always looked at Medicare as a cost to cut.
“We will fight for Medicare and we will win.”
“But Medicare isn’t a brand name or a branch office of a multinational company.
“It’s not some ailing industrial conglomerate where you strip out the assets for a corporate raider.
“In our country — in our Labor Party — we don’t outsource the responsibility we owe to our fellow Australians.
“We don’t imagine that caring for one another is something that should drive private profits.
“Medicare is not a hedge fund — it is a national institution, a community standard of the nation we want to see in the mirror.
“It is the great egalitarian idea that universal healthcare is the fundamental basis of a fair go for all.
“It belongs to all of us — and we will never allow the Liberals to take it away, cut it and undermined it.
“We will fight for Medicare and we will win,” he added.
And to home in of this message one last time, a simple refrain.
“We choose health,” Shorten said.
This article originally appeared in the Labor Herald.
