The ALP National Conference has unanimously committed a Shorten Labor Government to rebuilding Australia’s healthcare system and driving reform that delivers a better health system for all Australians.
A Health System For All puts primary care at the heart of a health system that will be affordable, accessible, universal and proactive.
Labor built Medicare, only Labor believes in Medicare, and only a Labor government can ensure Medicare continues to provide all Australians with decent affordable health care.
But Labor also believes that we must continually drive reform of our health system to search for new answers to preventing and treating disease and finding better and more effective ways for providing care and only a national Labor Government can drive this reform.
We must strive for a health care system that is designed around patients’ needs, not funding streams or institutions.
We have to support and value our health workforce and not just give lip service to engaging them in reform but ask them to drive it.
Labor knows that every step of the way to the provision of decent, affordable healthcare in this country we have had to fight the Liberal Party trying to deny Australians access to decent affordable healthcare, a tradition upheld today by the Abbott Government.
The GP Tax, the cuts to public hospitals, all this has one aim in mind: to destroy Labor’s great legacy of Medicare, and send us back to the days where your right to decent health care entirely depends on your capacity to pay.
The rebate freeze confirms Tony Abbott’s promise that the GP Tax is dead is as believable as his promises before the election of no new taxes and no cuts to health.
The Abbott Government remains committed to the GP Tax and Medicare will never be safe while Tony Abbott remains in power.
Only Labor has ever understood, that without decent, affordable healthcare, there can be no justice, no fairness, and for many, the economic opportunities they should enjoy to advance their lives and achieve their true potential, will be shut in their face.
The principles that guided Labor when we established Medicare are the principles that guide us today – that every Australian should have access to the best quality healthcare regardless of where they live and regardless of their capacity to pay.
A HEALTH SYSTEM FOR ALL
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2015