After several days of heated discussion surrounding Medicare, Bill Shorten is heading off to South Australia to deliver his “positive plans” for the state.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is well-known for his support of gay marriage, is in favor of a referendum on the issue instead of a parliamentary vote.
“Mr Turnbull says he’s got this in the bag, he claims he’s already won – I say to him – you ain’t seen anything yet”, he said.
EVEN as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists he has no plans to privatise Medicare, Labor candidate for Calare Dr Jess Jennings said he believes the federal election is a referendum on the survival of Medicare.
Labor also claims the decision to freeze the Medicare rebate paid to doctors amounts to a form of privatisation.
The Opposition Leader stirs the party faithful at the ALP campaign launch in Sydney’s west. Vision courtesy ABC News 24.
“So the MBS (Medicare Benefits Schedule) review and the (Medicare) compliance review are really the important policy dimensions”.
– Bill Shorten reverses the gender order from Gough Whitlam’s famous opening line of of the Labor icon’s It’s Time speech of 1972.
An opinion poll published by Fairfax Media on Saturday showed Labor ahead of the government with support of 51 percent of respondents compared to 49 percent for the conservative coalition. “They have been ringing older Australians in the evening frightening them and saying ‘Medicare is going to be sold off, Medicare will be privatised.’ This is the biggest lie of the campaign”, the Prime Minister said.
In answer to a question on possible privatisation of Medicare, the PM said: “There has been consideration of revising the Medicare payment system because it is about 30 years out of date …”
But Shorten used the “scoping study” released by the Productivity Commission as part of an inquiry commissioned by Morrison in April to back his claims about the government’s intentions, clearly signalling the Medicare attack will feature heavily in his final two weeks of campaigning.
But the shadow health spokeswoman is not convinced, declaring the government was now at “very, very advanced” stages of privatising the IT systems, having already put out an expression of interest to companies.
“Every delivery system of government has to be upgraded and improved so that it is, as I’ve said before, so that people are able to access services on digital platforms”.
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Mr Turnbull lied about it.
