LABOR has lashed Joe Hockey for comparing the $7 co-payment on Medicare services to family spending on beer and cigarettes.
Speaking this morning, the Treasurer said it “quite astounds me” that “some people are screaming about the $7 co-payment”.
“One packet of cigarettes cost $22. That gives you three visits to the doctor. You can spend just over $3 on a middy of beer, so that’s two middies of beer to go to the doctor,” Mr Hockey told ABC Radio.
“Let’s have some perspective about the costs of taking care of our health. And is a parent really going to deny their sick child a visit to the doctor which would be the equivalent payment of a couple of beers or one-third of a packet of cigarettes?”
Bill Shorten said Mr Hockey’s “casual” attitude to the Medicare policy demonstrated his government was “out of touch … with the real needs of ordinary Australians”.
“If you think that this is just a casual matter then this is very worrying for ordinary Australians because it confirms that people who wrote Tuesday night’s budget have no clue about the real world in which the rest of us live,” the Opposition Leader said.
Mr Hockey, when asked how a jobless 27-year-old would pay the co-payment under his plan to strip under-30s of unemployment benefits, said: “Well, I would expect to be in a job. That’d be the starting point; you’d be in a job. And we need you to work.”
Meanwhile, Labor is divided over the deficit levy ahead of Mr Shorten’s budget reply speech tonight, with the Opposition Leader pushing to “prioritise our fights” over the Medicare co-payment, petrol excise increase and pension changes.
Mr Shorten, who will outline the opposition’s formal response to the budget at 7.30pm (AEST) in Canberra, this morning also emphasised the $80 billion cut to state schools and hospitals funding which was “effectively blackmailing the states into increasing the GST”.
Mr Shorten this morning insisted the temporary levy on incomes above $180,000 was “a complete broken promise” but said the shadow cabinet “hasn’t got a final position” on it.
“It is absolutely a broken promise that people will mark him down for, but in order for us to be an effective opposition we also have prioritise our fights,” Mr Shorten told ABC Radio.
“We do see the deficit levy as a complete broken promise. It’s an el cheapo stunt when you see Coalition frontbenchers and the Prime Minister saying they’re doing their bit by paying more taxes they will get that back in three years whereas the pensioners will lose it for life” through lower indexation.
Mr Shorten said the Coalition was “wrecking and torpedoing” Medicare by introducing a $7 co-payment for GP services, and had attacked regional Australia by re-indexing the fuel excise.
Mr Shorten, when asked about the government’s plans to cut welfare to unemployed youth, said the measure was “pretty harsh”.
“You’d have to say the disposition of Labor is we won’t punish the most vulnerable, the least powerful in our community,” he said.
“The best way to help unemployed people is to help get them a job, not to punish them for being unemployed.
“We will talk about this move today and tonight in the budget reply speech.”
Mr Shorten said Labor was “very, very, very unimpressed” by plans to reduce the income threshold for Family Tax Benefit Part B, saying families with children earning more than $100,000 often struggled to make ends meet.
“This is a government that has lied and lied and lied before the election, in a systematic fashion, and now we’re seeing the chickens come home to roost.”
Government frontbencher Christopher Pyne labelled Mr Shorten “Australia’s No. 1 whinger” and demanded the speech outline Labor’s alternative plan to repair the budget.
“Bill will have to stop being Australia’s No. 1 whinger and he’ll have to actually outline what he will do. He can’t just be all complaint and no responsibility,” the education minister said.
“We’re in this position because Labor left us with this debt and deficit disaster. He needs to explain how he will pay the debt and deficit back.”
Source: The Australian