Bill Shorten pledges to axe 2014 budget cut to pharmaceutical benefits scheme, which has been booked as saving $1.3bn but is blocked by the Senate
Bill Shorten at Drummoyne medical centre in Sydney, where 15 month old Eleanor Luopis and her mum Katherine were getting a cough checked out. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Patients will pay less for taxpayer-subsidised medication if federal Labor wins the election, but the move will cost $3.6bn over a decade.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, will pledge to axe the Coalition’s cut to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme from the 2014 budget, which was reaffirmed in this year’s budget.
The $1.3bn saving has been in limbo because the government couldn’t get enough support to pass it in the Senate.
Under the government’s plan, general patients would make a $5 co-payment and concession patients would pay an extra 80 cents on each prescription and there are also increases to the scheme’s safety net threshold.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office Labor’s policy will cost $971m over four years.
“Labor will not stand by and let Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals dismantle universal healthcare,” Shorten said.
Medications would only increase in line with inflation if Labor was elected.
Speaking on Sky on Sunday, the opposition’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, said the government’s plan to increase the cost of medicines was “not the right way to go”.
“We know there are some people don’t fill scripts because of price, you talk to pharmacists and they say people come with a whole raft of scripts and say, ‘which one can I skip this week?’” she said.
“We’re announcing that we’re not going to do that – and continue to oppose it. It’s a bit of a fraud in the budget, the government knows it won’t get through the Senate and they don’t want to do it themselves, yet they’re still counting it in the budget.”
The opposition made a big ticket promise last week to lift a controversial freeze on rebates to doctors from 2017, at a cost of $12.2bn over a decade.
Asked whether this meant Labor would contribute less to the medicare research future fund, King said the government was aiming to reach $20bn in the fund despite some measures, like medicine price hikes, being blocked in the Senate.
“We support the concept [of the medical research fund] and getting to $20bn but there’s issues about the timeframe, and I think that’s true of the government as well.”
The Coalition’s campaign spokesman, Mathias Cormann, said the government had increased spending on health by $2.9bn over the next four years and increased funding for cancer treatments on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
He claimed Labor’s health promises were unfunded. King said the the promises were funded out of the $100bn of savings and revenue measures including $50bn by rejecting the government’s proposed corporate tax cuts.
Shorten campaigned on Sunday morning in the Liberal marginal seat of Reid, held by the assistant multicultural affairs minister, Craig Laundy. Historically, the electorate has been a Labor stronghold.
He visited a medical centre in Drummoyne and stopped off in a park, where some future voters were keen to give a lesson in a new dance move.
Afterwards the opposition leader is expected to head west.
Shorten will be keen to capitalise on growing anti-Liberal arty sentiment, with the West Australian premier, Colin Barnett, on the nose with voters ahead of a state election next year.
The WA economy is in dire straits following the mining downturn, and the latest state budget had a record deficit.
Leadership speculation continues to dog Barnett, and the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, snubbed him during a brief visit to Fremantle last week.
The Coalition holds 12 out of 15 lower house seats in the state but it will be a tough task to retain them all. The new seat of Burt is considered notionally Liberal.
Labor has three seats and all its sitting MPs are retiring.