Federal election 2016: leaders to stand firm against Mediscare

It is in the political interests of Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison to talk up the adverse impact of Bill Shorten’s “Mediscare” campaign and they have to let the people know they recognise their concerns.

But they cannot panic and allow the Opposition Leader, who has still not won the election, to dictate a never-ending policy of no savings or changes ever to be made in health and Medicare.

For a battered government to suddenly make an impossible promise of never cutting health spending or making any changes to Medicare would be an unacceptable policy capitulation. In the dying days of the 2013 election Tony Abbott declared there would be no cuts to health or education and suffered ever after.

What’s more, Shorten has actually changed his definition of what the privatisation of Medicare means and has extended to a catch-all of “harsh cuts to health”.

Shorten’s political tactic of describing potential changes to the back-office operations of Medicare to save administration costs as the privatisation of Medicare was dishonest but worked a treat. His refusal to repeat the claim since is evidence of the flimsy nature of the campaign, but he has evolved his claim into a more credible argument about four points: freezing the GP rebate, price rises for prescription medicine, cuts to incentives for diagnostic imaging and the “cuts” to hospital funding from the 2014 budget.

The rhetoric from Labor is that the Prime Minister must “rescind or reverse” these four savings measures and stop all “harsh health cuts”.

If the government accepts this reasoning it accepts the Medicare privatisation lie and its irresponsible offspring.

Morrison was right yesterday to say, as does the Australian Medical Association, the health system and Medicare must be sustainable.

“We can’t have the health system being a money pit where the argument is just about how much money you throw down the hole. The system has to be effective and it has to be efficient,” Morrison said. This has been the aim of previous Labor governments.

This should be self-evident and any suggestion that Medicare or the health system be preserved in aspic without change is a nonsense. It is a nonsense the Coalition shouldn’t be forced into accepting by an Opposition Leader who’s only authority is a successfully fraudulent scare campaign.

Yes, Turnbull and Morrison have to demonstrate that they recognise the concerns of the public, but to start the 45th parliament and budget negotiations aimed at addressing long-term debt and deficit with a panicked capitulation because it’s “easier” is no way to regain authority or demonstrate competence.