Leigh Sales grills Bill Shorten over ‘Mediscare’: ‘Aren’t voters smart to distrust you?’

ABC heavyweight Leigh Sales has fired both barrels at Opposition Leader Bill Shorten over his relentless “Mediscare” campaign.

SENIOR Liberal figures have seized on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s refusal to repeat his claim that a Coalition Government would privatise Medicare in a tense interview with ABC heavyweight Leigh Sales.

The excruciating exchange which aired last night has helped the government sharpen their attacks on Mr Shorten’s credibility.

Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne said the interview had raised the question of “whether we want to have a prime minister who tells lies all the time”.

“That is, of course, what Bill Shorten is offering the Australian public,” he told Today.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop said Mr Shorten had exposed himself as “seeking to sneak into government as prime minister on the basis of a lie”.

“It was quite evident that the whole Medicare scare was merely a fiction, he made it up, it’s a lie, and so I think that that will reflect very badly on Bill Shorten,” she told ABC radio this morning.

“And so I think that the whole Medicare scare campaign has now blown up in their face and we can get back to the facts, and that is that the Coalition will not privatise Medicare, has never planned to, was never going to, and that Bill Shorten is trying to base an election campaign on a falsehood.”

Coalition campaign spokesman Matthias Cormann this morning said Mr Shorten was “running scared of his own scare campaign”.

‘Aren’t voters smart to distrust you?’: Leigh Sales pulled no punches in last night’s interview with Bill Shorten.

Mr Shorten was pulled up on his campaign of false fears facing a grilling from ABC heavyweight Leigh Sales on Thursday night.

The 7.30 host pulled no punches hosting the Opposition Leader for the first time during the election campaign, opening with a scorcher.

“Given your record, aren’t voters smart to distrust you?” she rounded off her first question.

Mr Shorten was challenged on his claim at the centre of what’s been labelled the election’s biggest scare campaign, that a Coalition Government would privatise Medicare.

Asked where on the Liberal Party website one would find details of such a policy, Mr Shorten avoided directly answering the question.

“Well if you have a look at the taskforce which they set up, whether or not the Liberals have put it on their website doesn’t change the truth that they are spending $5 million of taxpayer money to privatise the payment system of Medicare,” he said.

“That’s not privatising Medicare though, is it?” challenged Sales, invoking the head of the Australian Medical Association Michael Ganning who said: “In no way would the outsourcing of the payment system equal the privatisation of Medicare”.

“Well, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion,” he said.

Mr Shorten denied his own party had ever contemplated privatising parts of the Medicare payment system, despite quotes from his Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen indicating otherwise.

The biggest hit came when Sales challenged the Labor leader to defend his argument “hand on heart”, nailing Mr Shorten in the exchange.

Leigh Sales: “Can you put your hand on your heart and look Australians in the eye and say that the Coalition has a policy to privatise Medicare?”

Bill Shorten: “I can say to the people of Australia that this election and their vote on July 2 will determine the future of Medicare.”

Leigh Sales: “Is the Coalition privatising Medicare?”

Mr Shorten didn’t give a definitive answer, repeating his claim that the election “will be about the future of Medicare”.

“You can vote Labor and make sure that we keep the price of our health care system down and that we keep it in government hands or you can vote Liberal and you look at the range of their cuts and a range of their manoeuvres and we will head down the path of an Americanised health care system, where it is — how much you earn will determine the quality of your health care,” he said.

An agitated Mr Shorten was forced to arc up when the argument about Medicare was completed with one final question from his host: “Isn’t the message that you’re sending with your hyperbole around Medicare that you don’t think that the truth alone can win you the election?”

Sales went on to grill the Opposition Leader on his shifted stance on company tax cuts and offshore processing, backflip on the schoolkids bonus, reducing his party’s promises for hospital funding and his association with crooked unions, and of course Labor’s “merry-go-round” of leaders.

He got a few shots in himself, labelling Malcolm Turnbull “some sort of poor man’s Paul Keating”, and dismissing the possibility of a Labor-Greens alliance in government.

The overarching theme of the tense interview was trust, an issue which Anthony Albanese was again grilled on this morning.

"It's in their DNA" - @AlboMP discusses Liberal's policy history with Medicare. #9Today https://t.co/LjP6bsWXRj

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) June 23, 2016

With his party’s Medicare claims under renewed scrutiny, the Labor frontbencher said privatisation was “part of (the Liberal Party’s) DNA”.

“The big divide in Australian politics is Labor that believe in the public health care system at the front, as the centrepiece of health policy, and the conservative forces who really don’t believe in Medicare, who’ve never believed in Medicare, who support private health care on the ability to pay, rather than based upon need,” Mr Albanese said.

Mr Shorten will be campaigning in Darwin today, where he is expected to face further questions over his claims about the Coalition’s plans for Medicare and other “big lies” revealed in a Daily Telegraph investigation today.