Treasurer says voters reacted negatively to past Coalition health policies but rebate freeze remains policy because system must become sustainable

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Scott Morrison has conceded that the Coalition has tough lessons to learn from the election about its perceived lack of commitment to Medicare.

But the freeze on Medicare rebates is still government policy and remains in the budget, he says, because the system must become sustainable.

He says the Coalition is still on track to win majority government, and if it does then it will work with the new Senate to pursue its $48bn company tax cut plan.

Turnbull offers mea culpa but hints Abbott-era health cuts played role in result Read more

Morrison struck a defiant tone in his interview with ABC radio on Wednesday morning, in contrast to Malcolm Turnbull’s more conciliatory press conference on Tuesday.

Turnbull faced reporters in Sydney on Tuesday for the first time in 48 hours, taking full responsibility for any mistakes in the recent election campaign and acknowledging the Coalition had work to do to rebuild public trust on health.

It was an attempt to arrest the bloodletting inside the Coalition with a full mea culpa on the election campaign, and send a message to conservatives that it was Tony Abbott who laid the groundwork for Labor’s successful offensive on Medicare.

He said voters had responded to Labor’s “grotesque lie” about Medicare because they obviously had doubts about the Coalition’s commitment to universal healthcare.

“There was some fertile ground in which that grotesque lie could be sown. There is no doubt about that,” Turnbull said.

Morrison took the same line as Turnbull on Wednesday, saying voters had obviously reacted negatively to Coalition policies on health stretching back a couple of years. But he did not say what those policies were.

“There were some very serious issues there which I think [Labor] drew on in the [Mediscare] campaign and pointed to in the campaign, and some commitments that were made around that before the last election, and what unfolded after that, that is what happened,” he said.

He then criticised the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, for saying that the Coalition wanted to privatise Medicare.

“This was a great outrageous lie. That has to hang around the neck of the leader of the opposition as a mark of complete dishonour in the way he conducted himself in this campaign,” he said.

Michael Gannon, Australian Medical Association president, said he thought the Coalition realised too late during the campaign that people worry about their health, and vote on it.

“They do regard it as one of the major issues when they decide how to vote,” Gannon said on Tuesday.



“The prime minister, the Coalition, have had the scare of their life. If they do survive, it’s time for them to listen about how elements of their health policy could be improved, and let’s start with number one – unfreezing the rebate,” he said.

The AMA has this year accused the Turnbull government of trying to enforce a GP co-payment by stealth by extending the freeze on Medicare rebates for another two years.

The Medicare rebate freeze has been in place since July 2012, but it was controversially extended by the Abbott government in 2014 for four years, leading to a stoush with medical groups.

The Turnbull government plans to extend the freeze for another two years, until mid-2020, to save the budget another $925.3m.

Groups such as the AMA and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners claim it will put patient health at risk, because GPs will be forced to introduce a co-payment to cover the ever-growing funding gap – and that will increase costs for patients.