“The opposition’s opportunistic attack on the use of private-sector expertise in the payments system for Medicare, and the government’s knee-jerk response, is a case of a misleading fear campaign thwarting evidence-based policy”, said James Pearson, the chief executive officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Advertisement
Shorten argued on Sunday that the conservative coalition plans to privatize Medicare – a claim Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull denies.
He said the Liberals had given the Productivity Commission new riding instructions, to investigate privatising human services and Americanising Medicare.
The federal government has admitted Labor’s Medicare scare campaign forced it to dump plans to outsource the agency’s back-office operations because it had seeded sufficient doubt in the minds of voters.
Most tellingly, the latest Newspoll has found that Labor won’t win enough votes in key marginals in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania to win the election. “What Bill Shorten is doing is peddling an extraordinary lie so audacious…it defies belief”. The prime minister said on Sunday “improvements and efficiencies will be undertaken within government”.
“He added:” I am not an unqualified fan of outsourcing at all … what we have to do is ensure we bring government services into the 21st century – and you don’t do that by pushing them out the door so there is nothing left inside government”.
He was joined by former ALP prime ministers Julia Gillard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke.
“I’m saying to all Australians unequivocally, as prime minister, that no part of Medicare that is delivered by government today will be delivered…by anyone else in the future”, he said.
It would come on top of the existing promise of a company tax cut.
After forcing Mr Turnbull to rule out the potential privatisation of the payments system, Mr Shorten pivoted to demand the Coalition reverse cuts to pathology, diagnostic imaging and a freeze to the GP rebates for bulk billing.
“When you are in the fight of your life, when your family member is in the fight of their lives, you need a government on your side and we will be that government”, he said of the suicide prevention package.
Shorten said the difference in competing economic visions had never been starker.
“We will revive it, or renew it, we will modernise it and we will do that within government”, he said.
Advertisement
He also made a pitch for indigenous candidates.
