Mediscared? Why Albanese and Dutton are bidding everything at a health auction

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese nor Opposition Leader Peter Dutton hide their disdain for the Greens’ pie-in-the-sky policies. The minor party’s plan to boost bulk-billing for all Australians was quickly sidelined last October, alongside promises of 50¢ transport and wiped student debt.

But now their $8.5 billion idea for free GPs is the centrepiece of a healthcare bidding war between Albanese and Dutton. It has quickly topped $12 billion. Australia is watching an auction over healthcare where no-one will cede a dollar, all while the budget, heading into deficit, begs restraint.

It tells us a lot about how both parties are approaching the May election. Labor will throw everything at health – one of its perceived strengths – to show voters it has their backs as the party that gave Australians Medicare. And the Coalition will turn old political dynamics on their head to stay in the game.

The bidding war for the healthcare vote has reached $12 billion before the campaign has even begun. Credit: Kathleen Adele

On Wednesday night, before Labor had even given the green light for media to report on its latest pledge to cut the maximum price of subsidised medicines to $25, the Coalition had sent around its own press release saying it would adopt the policy, at a cost of $689 million.

Add that to a commitment to match Labor’s public hospital deal ($1.7 billion) and women’s health package ($573 million), the Coalition’s funding for more subsidised psychology sessions ($500 million), and Labor’s new urgent care clinics ($644 million), and Australian taxpayers are guaranteed $12 billion in extra health spending before a polling date has even been set.

Dutton is prepared to commit money and explain where it comes from later, even as he promises to reduce government spending. That’s because he won’t tolerate a repeat of the Mediscare campaign that Labor weaponised three elections ago.

Mediscare lives on in political mythology as the scare campaign that almost sank the Turnbull government’s majority in 2016, as Labor leader Bill Shorten falsely claimed the Liberals would privatise Medicare. Labor knows it worked and the Coalition knows it took too long to neutralise the attack.

Dutton won’t let them make that mistake again. The opposition strikes as soon as it hears whispers of an incoming attack. It is making political calculations rather than policy considerations. For example, Coalition MPs are sceptical the bulk-billing spend will have the effect Labor is promising. They’re backing it anyway.

One former party strategist concedes some of its decisions go against the grain of what a Coalition government would do. “But we’re several weeks out from an election … The Coalition is on a war footing and they would be aware of the consequences of letting Labor spread misinformation without it being countered,” they said.

Dutton is stripping the government of leverage each time he matches its promises. And he is doing it so quickly, there is no room for speculation.

This forces Labor to dig back a decade to land its best blows. Dutton cannot control what Labor unearths from its archives. That’s why the government will keep pointing to Dutton’s record as health minister in the Abbott government, as it has done since the start of the year, to plant uncertainty in voters’ minds.

“Isn’t imitation the ultimate sort of form of flattery?” Health Minister Mark Butler asked on Thursday. “The key question is whether you can trust them on it.”

Labor has material to work with: Dutton tried to introduce a $7 GP fee and add $5 to medicine co-payments, in his push to make Medicare more sustainable. When Dutton introduced a three-year Medicare rebate freeze in 2014, there were warnings Australians would soon have to spend $45 out of their pockets just to see a GP.

That’s exactly what has happened.

But after three years in government, Labor cannot lay it all at Dutton’s feet.

Voters also have more data now: the Morrison government steered Australians through the pandemic and the Coalition is correct when it says bulk-billing rates were highest under its tenure, even though these statistics were inflated by COVID measures.

Scare campaign aside, Dutton could be upfront. He made a fair point as health minister when he said Medicare needed to be sustainable. Health cost almost $117 billion in the mid-year budget – 15.4 per cent of government spending – and costs will only rise as Australians get older.

Dutton’s latest spending commitments are not means-tested. They run counter to what he fought for as minister. Does he still think sustainability is an issue the federal government must tackle?

But Labor won’t allow that argument a fair hearing. Given both parties can deploy statistics to suit their narrative, spending more money has become the way to win the healthcare fight. Even if it means swallowing a Greens policy.

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