Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (14:14): I thank the member opposite for her question. People will remember back to the bad days of the Gillard and Rudd governments: in 2012-13 there was a lot of dysfunction and infighting. The government of the day was running up enormous debt— Ms Owens interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Parramatta will desist. Mr Perrett interjecting— The SPEAKER: As will the member for Moreton. Mr DUTTON: And yes, in that year Labor did spend $70 million less on health than in the year before, despite the fact that they were out telling Australians that they were spending more and more on health each year. Yes, it is the case that they spent less in that year. But let me just go to the reasons that was the case: $70 million less in that year, but people will remember when the Labor Party brought in a policy that resulted in millions of Australians prepaying their private health insurance premiums to beat the tax Labor was imposing on Australians with private health insurance. What that did was drag expenditure from one year into the next. Labor does not go into the detail, and Labor is never good with numbers. They mucked up that policy, and they mucked up many other policies. But I can tell you, the president of the AMA has said he supports, in principle, a copayment, and so does this government, and so did the Labor Party when Bob Hawke, a leader with heart, actually led the Labor Party. Ms King: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The SPEAKER: It is not an invitation to repeat the question. Ms King: The question did not mention the GP tax; it in fact was about the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme hike— The SPEAKER: I would point out to the member for Ballarat that when you use political epithets in the context of the question it makes it a very broad question. Mr DUTTON: In this budget the government committed to spending about $65 billion on health this year, which grew each and every year over the course of the next four years to about $74 billion by year four. As a country we spend about $140 billion per year on health, and that continues to grow as our population ages and as new medical technologies need to be adopted. We are spending more and more and more on health; that is absolutely the case. But it needs to be at a sustainable pace. The Labor Party, when it was in government, received two independent reports, both of which told Labor that spending in its current form was unsustainable. So, whilst we grow health expenditure each and every year in this budget, we do not do it at the same rate—the same unsustainable rate—that Labor was proposing. In the health budget we will spend about $20 billion this year— Ms King interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Ballarat will desist. Mr DUTTON: on Medicare services. Mr Dreyfus interjecting— The SPEAKER: As will the member for Isaacs. Mr DUTTON: And, importantly, out of this report we recognise that the Medicare expenditure in the year the honourable member referred to grew by 4.1 per cent, and even with the changes announced in this budget to make spending sustainable on Medicare we projected that 18.6 per cent growth over the next four years will take place in Medicare and that over the next decade the MBS will grow by almost 80 per cent. We have put in place a method by which we will make Medicare sustainable, we will defend Medicare, we will make it stronger and we will stop Labor from wrecking the health system in this country.