Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (16:00): Anti-Poverty Week is a good time to reflect on how this country and this government is tackling the growing number of people living in poverty and the increasing inequality in Australia. The Australian Council of Social Services states that around three million Australians are living in poverty, including about three-quarters of a million children. Australia is fast losing its egalitarian roots, which made this country the home of the fair go. We are for the first time seeing a generation who will be worse off than their parents. We're seeing one-third of Australian pensioners living in abject poverty. We are seeing consistently high unemployment and underemployment rates, increasing casualisation and decreasing job security. We're seeing increases in the cost of living, including skyrocketing power bills. We are seeing Australians have increasing difficulty in accessing the health care they need. And we're seeing this government make it consistently harder for the most disadvantaged in our society to get ahead—to get one step ahead. The reason I decided to enter politics was that, after working as a paediatrician in my electorate of Macarthur for 35 years, I was increasingly confronted with issues now more commonly described as the social determinants of health. As the world has changed over that time there have been many people left behind, and increasingly governments have had to adopt policies to prevent societal polarisation. In order to deal with this division into haves and have-nots, politicians must understand the issue, and it's clear to me that the Turnbull-Joyce-Abbott government has little understanding of the difficulties housing, health, education and employment cause for people of limited means. It almost seems to me that this government would be happy to have a class based society with a hereditary peerage, perhaps bringing in Prince Philip as Governor-General. In health I'm often asked to organise specialist appointments for my constituents, as they cannot afford the increasing gap payments or large up-front fees to see specialists. Many people avoid appointments with specialists because of cost. It's estimated that in my electorate around a third of referrals to specialists are not taken up, because of cost. Ms Brodtmann: Back to the fifties; what an achievement! Dr FREELANDER: Yes. For example, people with intractable heart failure, who need to see a cardiologist, or people with multiple sclerosis, who need to see a neurologist, do not go to their appointments, because they can't afford it. And that's a fact; that's occurring every day in Australia. Certainly in our medical visits around the countryside, from places as far south as Devonport in Tasmania to Rockhampton in Queensland, we see similar things occurring time and time again. This is a real difference in Australia now compared to the Australia I grew up in and it's something that we need to address. This government has shown absolutely no inclination to do so. Some newer treatments that are world's best practice and some investigations, such as MRIs for prostate cancer, which are much less invasive, safer and better investigations for men suspected of having prostate cancer, have been waiting to get a Medicare rebate for years and nothing has happened. That leaves men—in particular older men, who often are of very limited means—having to pay an up-front fee of around $600. This is happening every day in Australia. In health, the future is all about health data. Data collection is a major part of our health system now and will be increasingly so in the future, yet this government has sold off the Australian cancer registry, the first database in Australian health care of national significance and importance. They sold it to private enterprise, meaning that there will be fees involved in accessing that data in the future. It's another discriminatory health practice that this government persists in. In housing, many people of retirement age still have large mortgages and many young people see themselves as permanent renters, yet investors are given enormous tax advantages by this government. It's terrible, and it needs to change, yet this government has shown no understanding and no willingness to do this. If I can mention, very quickly, one last thing—our foreign aid budget has been cut, leading to significant changes in some of the most disadvantaged countries in our neighbourhood, yet this government has shown no inclination to improve it. (Time expired)