Daniel Hurst, political correspondent
theguardian.com, Tuesday 12 August 2014
Health minister confirms he is ‘seriously considering’ medical association’s compromise proposal on GP co-payment
PUP leader Clive Palmer and the leader of the House Christopher Pyne in the House of Representatives. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Clive Palmer has declined to comment on possible compromises on health and education policy, despite previously insisting his three senators would oppose any Medicare co-payment or deregulation of university fees.
The Palmer United party (PUP) leader was reluctant to express a firm position on such options before a meeting with the treasurer, Joe Hockey, on Tuesday night, which was part of the government’s attempts to avoid defeat on contentious budget measures.
Ministers signalled last week they were open to the need to negotiate changes to the health and education proposals in order to secure Senate approval, and Hockey has been using the winter parliamentary recess to travel around the nation talking to crossbench senators.
The health minister, Peter Dutton, reinforced the message of compromise on Tuesday when he said the government was “seriously having a look” at an alternative to the co-payment proposed by the Australian Medical Association (AMA).
The reworking of the government’s proposed $7 co-payment is believed to include exemptions for pensioners and disadvantaged groups, raising significantly less than the $3.5bn budgeted over four years. The AMA declined to comment on the details.
Labor and the Greens are firmly against the Medicare co-payment as a matter of principle, and Palmer has previously said he was not open to compromise on the measure, indicating it could not pass the Senate.
But Dutton questioned whether the obstacles were insurmountable, saying senators were “taking strategic positions at the moment”.
The minister told radio 2UE most of the debate was “about whether or not particular groups of people are eligible for exemption” rather than the $7 amount.
The government was analysing the costs of the AMA’s proposal, he said.
“We’re seriously having a look at what they’re suggesting but some of the other crossbench senators have had suggestions to make as well and we’ll work with them and have a look at suggestions that they’ve made,” Dutton said.
Dutton said the crossbenchers understood the government wanted a strong Medicare, and “if we don’t make the changes now, I just don’t think that we can expect to have a world-class health system in 10 or 20 years’ time”.
Palmer said he would not broadcast the PUP’s positions to Hockey before the dinner on Tuesday night, but reinforced his concerns the budget was unfair and the government must “have a rational look at what the community wants”.
“What I expect to get out of this meeting is a nice dinner, a good wine, a bit of port and a great dessert – that’s my expectation,” Palmer told the ABC.
Asked whether the PUP would be more likely to support a GP co-payment if the government and the AMA reached agreement on an alternative model, Palmer said only: “I don’t talk about hypothetical situations.”
Pressed on whether the PUP would take a more favourable approach to the higher education package if the government abandoned plans to increase interest rates on student loans, Palmer said he “wouldn’t comment on it yet”.
“I’m not going to telegraph our position to the treasurer via the ABC,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
In a broader observation on the government’s budget troubles, Palmer said: “It’s very important that the economy has got some sort of confidence in the processes of government and it’s very hard to see how business would have confidence at the moment, so you’ve either got to have a revamp and a mini budget or a double dissolution [election].”
Labor and the Greens said they would not accept a compromise on the GP fee, citing comments from the former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello that the government should drop the proposal because it could not pass the Senate.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Dutton “should get his head out of the sand”.
Any move to exempt pensioners would be “an admission that the GP tax is an ill-conceived idea”, Shorten said. “The whole GP tax is a clunker, it’s rotten, it’s unfair, it’s a broken promise.”
The acting leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, said Tony Abbott should accept that his budget was “dead, buried and cremated” – a line the prime minister had previously used about the Howard government’s WorkChoices policy.
On Tuesday the Tasmanian PUP senator, Jacqui Lambie, reaffirmed her opposition to stripping unemployment benefits from young jobseekers for months at a time, saying the policy would harm people’s morale and lead to higher depression and suicide rates.
Lambie told Sky News she found Hockey to be likeable, humorous and honest during their meeting earlier this month. “I think he realised in five minutes he was wasting his time with any negotiation with me and PUP was not going to move on anything that we had already told the Australian people we were going to stand firm on,” she said.
No clear breakthroughs have emerged following meetings between Hockey and crossbenchers, although the treasurer said a lot of commentators were “getting a little ahead of themselves” in their comments about the fate of the budget.
“We have always said that the door is open and we are always prepared to meet with sensible senators that are prepared to lay down a plan,” Hockey told the ABC on Monday.
“I have now met with a number of independent senators. They have given me various pieces of information that they want me to analyse. I have also invited them to come in and meet with Treasury officials to understand the full impact of the budget and the challenges that Australia has. I think it is important that we carefully and methodically go through a process of engagement … it is not unusual to have various budget initiatives held up in discussions in the Senate.”
Last week the Liberal Democratic party senator, David Leyonhjelm, told Hockey the government might gain better acceptance of its proposed $7 GP co-payment if the proceeds were used to secure a matching reduction in the cost of medicines under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Leyonhjelm said Hockey had indicated “he would think about that”.
The Democratic Labour party senator, John Madigan, said he told Hockey on Thursday he remained concerned the budget would have the biggest impact on “those people in our society who have got the least”.
Other senators to have met Hockey recently, Nick Xenophon (independent) and Bob Day (Family First), called on the government to abandon the paid parental leave scheme.
