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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 143 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This debate today continues what the Greens began in November last year, with a motion calling for a government strategy to address the decline in bulk-billing, in the context of an irresponsible federal government attitude.

Of course, the federal context has shifted even further from what ought to be the core business of government, with John Howard's fixation on the war. In the Canberra Times on 14 February, the federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, responded to the Australian Medical Association's call for a 1.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy by saying that defence was the top priority. We will be talking about the war later today, so I will not go into detail on that at the moment.

Mr Costello is quoted in this article as saying:

"We won't be increasing expenditures by billions of dollars... In a difficult budgetary situation with troops already pre-deployed to the Middle East and the expenses involved in the defence build-up, the priority for expenditures will be defence."

This is an outrageous situation. The United Nations Secretary General is not calling on us to do this. We are following a president who was not even properly elected. I support very strongly this motion for the government to take a strong position to the next health ministers meeting. In fact, as members are aware, I have prepared an amendment to the motion to make it clear that the assembly encourages the government to take a strong position. I do not know at this stage what they will be saying at the meeting. That is the amendment I am talking to now.

In our community at the moment, there is clearly a terrible lack in the availability of bulk-billing. Basically, the federal health minister's responses in recent months to the increasing attention to the bulk-billing crisis has been to talk about shortages in rural areas. Whilst this is also clearly a serious gap-there are communities left with no GPs when the local GP retires after 20 years because there is no-one willing to live with the conditions-the ACT's rate of bulk-billing is at a similar level to that in many rural communities.

The ACT has been left out of metropolitan fringe and rural initiatives, and yet we are firmly at the bottom end of the scale for bulk-billing access. Having insisted on setting up basic medical services as independent contractors, the government has made the conditions almost untenable. Something has to give.

I note with concern the decline not only in the ACT, but around Australia, and the federal government's misplaced and misguided priorities. The main point I want to make now about my amendment is that we are making the motion more proactive at the meeting with the Commonwealth by encouraging the government to strongly argue the concerns being raised in the Assembly today.

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