GP co-payment to be abandoned as Government seeks to knock off 'barnacles'

Updated

The Federal Government is abandoning a centrepiece of its May budget, the $7 GP co-payment.

It is one of several measures swept up in what Prime Minister Tony Abbott is calling "a barnacle-clearing" exercise to remove policies slowing the Government's momentum through its second year in office.

Sources have told ABC that the Coalition was "willing to go back to the drawing board".

With only five sitting days left in the year, the Government has not introduced legislation to enact the co-payment as it does not have sufficient support to pass the Senate.

The Coalition was also expected to make further changes to its $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme, a signature policy for Mr Abbott.

The policy would pay new mothers their full salary for six months.

Mr Abbott had already watered down the scheme, lowering the maximum possible payment from $75,000 to $50,000.

Further changes are now in the works.

Government sources denied the scheme was one of the "barnacles" mentioned, but they had foreshadowed "further refinement".

Budget is like re-marketing the Hindenburg: Shorten

In an address to the National Press Club, Labor leader Bill Shorten said Australians knew the budget was unfair.

"Every time they scrape off a barnacle, they just reveal another hole in the hull," he said.

"A new set of talking points won't fix this budget - it's like raising the Titanic or re-marketing the Hindenburg, and that's really hard."

In Question Time, Mr Shorten asked which barnacle the Prime Minister would be scraping off: "His disaster of a Defence Minister or his disaster of a GP tax?"

But Mr Abbott turned the phrase against the Labor leader, labelling him "Barnacle Bill" after the character from the Australian children's classic The Magic Pudding.

"They were incompetent in government, they are wreckers in Opposition, the barnacle that most needs to be gotten rid of is Barnacle Bill sitting opposite," Mr Abbott said.

The Prime Minister has also been forced to defend his Defence Minister, David Johnston, over an extraordinary attack yesterday on the Government's ship-building company, which Senator Johnston accused of not being able to "build a canoe".

In his speech to the Press Club, Mr Shorten announced Labor would join the multi-billion-dollar Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank if it won government.

The Beijing-based fund has been established to pay for major infrastructure projects in the region and is regarded as a rival to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Cabinet's National Security Committee decided not to join the fund amid concerns about its transparency and governance arrangements.

But Mr Shorten said the Government had missed an "unparalleled economic opportunity for Australia".

"If Labor was in government, we would have got the details right, and we would have signed up," he said.

"When we are in government, we will get the details right, and we will sign up."

Topics: federal-government, federal-parliament, australia

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