Page 1476 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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The federal Liberal Party are still doing their best to break this promise in as many ways as possible. Their current plan to cut funding for free pap smears and other pathology services represents an absurd piece of badly thought out policy which will have an awfully detrimental effect on the health of Australians, particularly women. A higher cost of medical procedures designed to detect developing issues early on will mean that fewer people will get tested and fewer people will find problems of disease which may be beginning to develop. So fewer people will have the ability to get tested and therefore there will be those concerns which may see diseases developing later on. This leads to a higher incidence of people detecting these issues later on when the treatment is more expensive, is more dangerous and has a lower success rate. Already each year over 800 Australian women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and around a third of those women are likely to die from the disease. This policy from the federal coalition would work to make this situation worse. The policy is a disgrace, and the Liberals should be ashamed of themselves.
The coalition did not even have the good sense or decency to talk to experts in the field about the proposed policy. As the Australian Medical Association president, Brian Owler, put it earlier this year:
When they—
the government—
make these announcements, just like the co-payments, they don’t talk to anyone … They don’t talk to pathologists, they don’t talk to doctors, they just make these announcements and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Those on this side of the Assembly understand why people get upset. On this side we understand. I am dubious about whether those on the other side understand.
This government is doing the best job possible to try to reverse the effects of these various cuts by the federal government, including cuts to concessions. The support this government provides to lower income Canberrans in health, education and community services, and through the ACT concessions program, helps us to move towards a more equitable community with better outcomes for all.
Some of this support for low income Canberrans can be seen through the reforms that have been implemented during my time as Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations. The changes that have been made by this government to public holidays provide low paid workers in particular with the penalty rates they are entitled to on those significant days. Additionally, the portable long service leave bill which passed yesterday, with support from this side of the house but without support from the Canberra Liberals, will provide better work-life balance and social outcomes for some of the lowest paid and hardest working members of our community.
We know that aged care and waste workers are the hardest workers in the ACT and, of course, some of the most vulnerable, with very low incomes: $43,000, as I said yesterday, for workers in the aged care industry. We know that having a good
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