QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (14:27): Well, this Labor government believes in a simple principle: when you are sick, all you should need is your Medicare card, not your credit card. We have backed those beliefs with record investment in hospital funding and in Medicare. And what have those opposite done?

On the one side, we have the coalition, led by their current leader, the member for Hume, who didn't just support cuts to health; he actually wanted the cuts to health to go further. In 2015, he said: Cost-cutting programs can be painful, and they always involve hard trade-offs … And then he continued to say: … this work needs to extend across the entire health system.

Australians know who bore the costs of those trade-offs. It was them. Maybe it is time for those opposite to consider my counterpart's sage advice.

Maybe it is time for a rebrand—a rebrand that would see you finally support public health, because you don't at the moment. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: I advise the chamber that Senator Lambie has passed her question to Senator Ruston.