Here we go again: another election, another lying ‘Mediscare’ campaign from a desperate Labor. The only difference is that not even the ABC is pretending it’s anything but a desperate lie.
In fact, it was the ABC who first exposed Labor’s latest attempt to reheat their long-debunked lie.
Melbourne-based ABC reporter Pat McGrath and his colleagues Kevin Nguyen and Michael Workman […] uncovered a shocking distortion of the truth in a campaign ad authorised by federal Labor’s head office.
The attack ad targeting Peter Dutton was edited in such a way to suggest the Opposition Leader had declared unequivocally that “Medicare is dead”.
It was pushed out across the ALP’s social media accounts, and according to the ABC, was also placed as a paid ad on Facebook.
Damaging? Yes. True? No.
In fact, the audio was deceptively edited from a 2014 press conference, when Dutton was health minister. The full quote is this:
“We’re very clear about this. Medicare is dead if we can’t make it sustainable today. The Labor Party will kill Medicare by offering everything to everybody for free and the government is determined to make Medicare sustainable (and) strong, not just for today, these are plans that will set up Medicare for the next decade or two.
“So, the Labor Party can pretend to the Australian public that things are for free, they can’t be for free, we have to pay for a world-class medical system.”
Even with the lie so brutally exposed even by Labor’s ABC lickspittles, the government is doubling down.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denies he has been spreading misinformation after a Labor Medicare campaign was found to be misleading […]
“Peter Dutton, when he was the health minister – and remember, he was voted Australia’s worst health minister by doctors – [he] tried to introduce a GP tax, so a tax every time people went to the doctor that would have had to have made a payment. So abolishing bulk billing,” Albanese told ABC Sydney.
Except that that’s a lie, too. The proposed co-payment had so many exemptions – pensioners, children, dole bludgers – that it was little more than a token. Bulk billing – where the patient is charged only at the Medicare scheduled amount, rendering the visit ‘free’ (except for the taxpayer) – would have remained in place. Indeed, bulk-billing rates under the coalition were higher than they are under Labor.
It’s not just Albanese peddling the desperate lies.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has accused the coalition of “coming after Medicare and medicines and pensions,” prompting opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston to warn that Labor was reviving its discredited 2016 “Mediscare” campaign and telling lies.
In a press conference in Canberra on Tuesday, Chalmers clawed into Coalition claims that Labor had “lost control” of spending, which will include $2.3 billion in additional spending on Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme...
In 2016, Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign falsely suggested the Coalition wanted to privatise Medicare.
They ran the scare campaign again in 2019 and 2022. Each time, they looked more and more foolish. But ‘foolish’ is Albanese’s middle name. Not to mention ‘desperate’. So, they’re giving it another crack, even though almost nobody, not even the ABC, is buying it any more.
Health Minister Mark Butler said Labor would put Medicare at the centre of its election agenda. “Labor will lay out our plan to keep working to deliver more doctors, more bulk-billing and more urgent care,” he said.
Money, money, money – and none of it their own. Not to mention no end in sight of turbocharged mass immigration. Because, when Labor talk about ‘more doctors’, what they really mean is ‘more doctors imported from the Third World’.
