| Doorstop interview, Canberra
Subjects: Health Funding; Labor’s $387 billion in extra taxes; Clive Palmer; Pauline Hanson
EO&E…………………………………………………………
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Thanks for coming along today. As we approach the one week mark of the election campaign, what’s clear is and what’s at stake in this campaign is becoming increasingly obvious and clear. Today Prime Minister Morrison is out there identifying how our support for small business is going to create more jobs, more prosperity, for more Australian families. How our investment in infrastructure is going to ease the pressures on Australian families and reduce congestion in Australian cities. Ultimately how our lower taxing agenda is going to ensure that we can pay for the services that Australia depends upon, but also absolutely deliver for Australian families. Cost of living relief and greater incentive to work harder. The abolition of the 37c in the dollar income tax bracket that will wipe out, wipe out bracket creep for so many Australian families and hardworking Australians. And the evidence that is clear that the elimination of bracket creep for those families is going to make workers across low and middle incomes significantly better off in the future. And the contrast with a Labor Party under Bill Shorten who are taxing and spending like there’s no tomorrow but also with so little detail attached to it. Mr Shorten out there today has struggled to outline the details of his health promises. He’s gone out there trying to make a big issue out of health in this election campaign [indistinct]. There are 421 items on the Medicare schedule supporting cancer treatment. Mr Shorten and Mr Bowen have said today they’re only going to have one new Medicare schedule item. Catherine King said there might be a few but how many are going to miss out. Are there 421 different cancer treatments that won’t be supported under Bill Shorten, or will there only be 410 that won’t be supported under Bill Shorten? Whatever it is, it’s clear the Labor Party don’t know the detail. Catherine King’s admitted that today, she said there’s more work to do on Labor’s policy and promise, well if there’s more work to do, why hasn’t the Labor Party done this work? Why is it that they’ve gone out there promising that they can provide all of this support to cancer patients and their families and yet they’re offering a cruel false hope to those families. Because it seems the vast majority will still face potential costs, will still face essentially the same situation we have already. Our Government has been very clear. We continue to back investment in terms of cancer treatment and services. That’s why we’ve listed so many cancer drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It’s why we’ve supported record levels of health funding growing by more than 60 per cent, and even there when it comes to hospital funding, you can see again that Mr Shorten is making promises that he just can’t keep. Just yesterday he was spruiking the fact that he said he would be listing the Federal Government contribution towards public hospitals to 50 per cent, today he’s spending the same money on other things, how can that be? How can you go out there committing that funding to things that aren’t part of the usual hospital services and the way in which they’re calculated? How can he count the same couple of billion dollars again and again in different ways? What’s clear is the Labor party is over promising in these areas without thinking through the detail, without doing the analysis raising false hope for Australians and ultimately Australians I’m sure will judge the fact that Labor with their high taxing agenda will ultimately have a weaker economy and with a weaker economy in time, there’ll be less money for hospitals, for schools, for healthcare and otherwise. You can’t keep jacking up taxes the way Labor proposed $387 billion worth of higher taxes without it leading to a weaker economy and in the long run fewer jobs, lower Government revenue to spend on the services that Australians rely on.
QUESTION:
Just on that $6.8 billion costing of how much would it cost to make all the health of the cancer items free? Doesn’t that just highlight the issue of out-of-pocket costs for cancer patients? And what’s the Government going to do to address that?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
What it highlights is that Bill Shorten has not done the homework on his policy, that coming out and trying to make a big hero of himself in his budget reply speech, Bill Shorten promised the earth, but is going to deliver relatively little and that is a cruel cruel thing to do in terms of the way it treats Australians with health challenges.
Journalist: Last week Scott Morrison said he wanted cancer to be above politics. Now you’re attacking Labor for spending $2.3 billion instead of $6.8 billion on cancer. Does that indicate that you’ve given up on trying to match that package?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
No, what we are doing is running our appropriately budgeted careful approach that is to say that we will follow good sound health advice as we’ve done in listing drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme whenever the recommendation has come forward. That’s about following established processes and practices and clear clinical advice. Bill Shorten however appears to have decided that there are cheap political headlines to grab in this space but worse than that, he’s not only going after the cheap political headlines he hasn’t even done the effective homework to work out what it would cost how he would pay for it and how many people would be left out. And it seems as if it seems as if more than 400 different treatments may well be completely ignored under Bill Shorten’s policy promise.
QUESTION:
You keep saying that Bill Shorten hasn’t done his homework on this, the Minister Greg Hunt his figures have come from the health department, he said he’s asked them before the Government went into caretaker mode. So if you won Government at the election again would you allow the opposition access to the resources of the department to work through their policies?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well oppositions frequently request briefings with Governments and we work through those processes in the established way. But our focus right now is on winning the next election ensuring we win that election to give Australians the growing economy they need so that they can get a job and secure their job, their children, their grandchildren so that they can have confidence in meeting their cost of living pressures and so that they can have confidence that Government will receive the revenue that a growing economy provides, to keep the budget balanced, to deliver tax cuts that can continue our record investment in hospitals schools and services Australians rely on.
QUESTION:
Isn’t it the best way to get rid of bracket creep to legislate the tax brackets to inflation?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well what we are doing in terms of fixing bracket creep is ensuring that we eliminate the 37c in the dollar, the 37c in the dollar income tax bracket. That means that it’s not just inflationary effects you’re getting rid of, but if somebody works a little bit harder, gets a little bit more money for working, overtime working an extra shift or getting a pay rise. They’re not then pushed into an extra tax bracket. That’s what we’re doing. By eliminating that 37c in the dollar tax bracket. And that is going to provide more support for Australian families and less stress that if you take that extra shift you might get pushed into that higher tax bracket.
QUESTION:
Why does someone earning $150,000 a year deserve a tax cut of about $4,500 under the Coalition?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Our belief is that hard working Australians ought to get a little bit of their tax back as a result of our economic management, growing the economy bringing the budget back to balance. Now under our reforms those Australians in the top tax bracket, the top 20 per cent of Australian income earners will continue to pay 60 per cent of income tax. And we have a highly progressive tax regime in Australia that we will maintain in terms of a progressive structure that ensures those who were in the most pay the most. But we don’t want to have a disincentive there for people to work harder to get a promotion, to take on another job, to work an extra shift. People ought to be able to do that and not feel that they’re going to be pushed up into a higher tax bracket.
QUESTION:
Clive Palmer today announced he’d be compensating workers at Queensland Nickel, to my knowledge the taxpayer has also compensated some of them back two years back. So will the Government be asking Clive Palmer to pay back the money that taxpayers have paid?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
I think we’ll be looking very carefully at what it is that Clive Palmer is promising what it is he’s planning to do and whether there is scope for taxpayers in that regard. But you do have to wonder given the extent of spending on advertising and elsewhere that’s happened from Clive Palmer in recent times. Why this promise has been so long in coming about.
QUESTION:
These Health figures followed that of Treasury last week when you costed Labor’s policies or tax policies at $387 billion. Are you worried that you’re going to lose a vote of confidence that so much money and resources Government resources and time is being used to pull apart Labor’s policies?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
No, we’re running a positive agenda as a Government offering tax relief for hardworking Australians, offering investment in terms of our skills package more apprenticeships offering support for mental health services record infrastructure program. These are the positives but every election is a choice and the choice Australians face ought to be one where they have the facts on the table and it’s very clear that Bill Shorten is trying to hide the facts has not done the homework and that’s why all of his all of his costings appear to be wrong, all of his promises appear to be exaggerated and we will be holding them to account each and every step of the way.
QUESTION:
What do you say to cancer sufferers who might say that $2.3 billion to reduce out-of-pocket costs is better than, is a lot better than nothing, and can you confirm that there won’t be anything beyond what’s in this year’s budget for cancer in the Coalition’s policy offering.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
We’ll continue to announce policies as a Government between now and the Election Day of course and we’ll continue to take advice from clinicians and experts as we always do as a Government. And that advice has seen us invest many multiples of what Labor’s figure is, many multiples of what Labor’s figure is, to support cancer patients in being able to access medicines and support at vastly reduced rates or no rates depending on their circumstances. And so we have invested many of those many times that amount. Over the last few years and that’s been about delivering support. What we have not done is go out there and make a rash promise that is uncosted, is lacking in detail and that raises false hopes when the Labor Party clearly are not able to meet what it is they’ve promised.
QUESTION:
Pauline Hanson’s campaigning in your home state South Australia today, do your colleagues have any reason to be worried?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM:
Well I would urge those in South Australia, those voters in South Australia to remember that Pauline Hanson has suggested that we should tear up the Murray-Darling Basin plan which would be a detriment to those in South Australia as well as indeed to the certainty of many upstream communities. I’d urge those in South Australia to know that Pauline Hanson opposes trade deals that have given remarkable new access to our wine makers, to our agricultural producers and that ultimately people ought to vote in a way that gives Government stability certainty in terms of implementing a policy agenda that in our case is about economic stability for the future, lower taxes, paying back Labor’s debt, creating more job opportunities for Australians, 1.25 million jobs under the Coalition to be created over the next five years. Thanks guys.
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