Malcolm Turnbull interview Watsons Bay, New South Wales

What a beautiful day in Sydney Harbour and you know we’ve got so many of these wineries, these wine businesses from central New South Wales here showing their wares and reminding us how important small business is to our economic plan – how important the support that we’re giving small business is through the Budget – how important the support we’re giving to businesses with turnovers of less than $10 million which Bill Shorten would deny them. We’re giving them a tax cut from July 1 and access to instant asset write-offs. Mr Shorten doesn’t want them to have that. We do. These businesses, wine businesses right across Australia are benefitting, will have the potential to benefit from the big export markets we’ve opened up – another key part of our national economic plan. Above all the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement – we shouldn’t forget the Labor Party opposed that agreement. The Unions spent a lot of money advertising against the agreement trying to ensure it wasn’t approved by the Parliament – well it was and the wine industry, the Australian wine industry is seeing massive growth as a result of that element of our national economic plan.

So right across the board, every element of our policy, supporting business, supporting small business, supporting exports, supporting innovation – right across the board, every element of our economic plan is driving jobs and growth. Here in Watsons Bay, here in central New South Wales, in Orange where the wine makers come from and all the produce vendors there come from, right across the country – jobs and growth. Driven and secured for the future by our national economic plan.

JOURNALIST:

Prime Minister, Tony Abbott had planned to charge Australians more for medicine. Bill Shorten says he’s formally abandoning that plan – will you match that?

PRIME MINISTER:

Bill Shorten yet again is putting some more hundreds of millions of dollars, nearly $1 billion on what he calls the spend-o-meter. He thinks it’s a joke. You saw him just the other night in the Central Coast laughing about more millions of dollars on the spend-o-meter. Well, we take government spending seriously. Government must live within its means. We have a health system, the best in the world and we support it with more funding every year. Bulk billing is growing. Bulk billing is at its highest ever. The Labor Party’s claims to be defending Medicare are as usual spurious. He has no way of paying for these additional expenditures – no way at all other than higher taxes. He’s yet to tell us what they will be but at this stage the black hole of unfunded promises keeps on getting deeper and darker.

JOURNALIST:

Just wondering if you could respond to Tim Costello’s comments regarding refugees on Nauru? He’s likened their treatment there to a psychological trauma.

PRIME MINISTER:

I don’t accept what Tim Costello says there. It is absolutely critical that we maintain a secure border protection policy and that is why it is absolutely critical that people who seek to come to Australia through the services of people smugglers are not able to settle in Australia. That is why the boats have stopped for over, well over 600 days now. There have been no people smuggling expeditions and it’s important that it stays that way. We are resolute on this issue and you know the Labor Party is hopelessly divided on it.

JOURNALIST:

So no change on medicines, Prime Minister? They’re going to be paying more under you?

PRIME MINISTER:

The changes with co-payments with respect to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as set out, we are committed to, yes. There is no change to that but can I just say to you - if you look at the benefits of what we have done with pharmaceutical benefits, with medicines, because we have been able to manage the health budget well we have been able to bring onto the pharmaceutical benefits schedule $3 billion worth of new medicines, including first country in the world to list on a pharmaceutical benefits schedule so that it becomes affordable, the drug that treats melanoma and other drugs that treat breast cancer. We've seen just in the last week we are paying for, subsidising, paying for in fact continuous glucose monitors for young people with type 1 diabetes. These are the new drugs and new technologies we can afford if we manage our health budget sustainably and that's what we're doing and that's what we're delivering.

JOURNALIST:

Mr Turnbull, Mr Shorten has outlined billions over the long term, tens of billions of dollars of savings to the Budget in not proceeding with tax cuts outlined by the Government, in his change in climate policy to mention a few. How do you justify the use of the term "black hole" when he can measure his expenditure against savings by cutting back on your policies?

PRIME MINISTER:

At the last count Mr Shorten had a black hole, unfunded, including the points you made, unfunded black hole of unfunded promises of $66 billion over the next four years.Now the Budget is out, the PEFO is out, so he now has no excuse to set out, he and his Shadow Treasurer should set out precisely how they are going to fund the Budget in their reckoning over the Forward Estimates, over the next four years. To give you an example of the reckless exaggeration of Mr Shorten, he's been saying that because we have continued with not increasing the Medicare benefit that is paid to doctors for a normal consultation, a GP consultation, because we have, Labor, as you know, froze the indexation in 2013 and we've maintained that. He says because we're not going to resume indexation immediately that will mean patients will be paying $20 or $25 more. That's what he said. You've all heard him say that. Do you know what putting indexing that $37 payment from July 1 this year would add? Less than 60 cents to the payment. The doctor would receive less than 60 cents extra and indexation up to 2019-20 would result in the doctor receiving around $2.50 extra. So the extraordinary and reckless exaggeration of Mr Shorten is there. That's a fact. What I've described to you is what the consequence would be of unfreezing that indexation. Now clearly what he's doing is, as usual, trying to scare people about Medicare. The fact is we are spending more on Medicare than ever before and we'll continue to do so. The fact is that bulk billing is at an all-time high and it has been growing. So Mr Shorten's scare campaign is, as usual, baseless. It's as baseless as his claim that he has funded his promises, which we know he has not.

JOURNALIST:

Is it fair that in addition to claiming $273 a night to stay in Canberra, politicians can take advantage of a tax ruling which allows them to claim electricity bills, rates, rent, mortgage payments and even minor renovations as a tax deduction? Secondly, obviously you currently live in the Lodge but have you in the past claimed tax deductions for any of those items? And have you previously paid your $273 a night allowance to your wife, Lucy, as rent?

PRIME MINISTER:

Thank you. Look it's very important that politicians’ pay and allowances and rules relating to tax deductions are not set by the politicians. Our pay and our allowances, travelling allowances covering travel expenses are set by the Remuneration Tribunal which is independent of the Government and of course the Australian Tax Office sets the rules and there's quite a long ruling that sets all the rules for deductibility which are in line with business expense deductibility. So that's the, that is how it is and that's how it should be and how it has been for a very long time.

JOURNALIST:

There's a doctor here in the crowd who's suggested that the problems with the health care system relates to the primary health network, an oversubscribing of bureaucrats and overfunding there. We've seen Labor throw a lot of money at health. Is there any plan to change the structure of the health system that hasn't been outlined already by your party?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well there is a very important plan that we have, in fact it's a policy that we are starting to implement, initially on a trial basis and that is to create Health Care Homes. See about 40% of the GP consultations are as a result of visits to the doctor by people, by a relatively small percentage of the community with chronic conditions, with multiple problems. They obviously, they require support and treatment. What the medical profession has been saying to us and in particular to the Health Minister, Sussan Ley, is they want to look at a different way of care. So what we are doing is rolling out, initially on a trial basis, what we call Health Care Homes and what we will do is we will say to a GP, you nominate the patients that you are going to look after holistically - you're going to manage their care, which may involve several specialists, may involve other support staff, nurses and physios and so forth. You manage that, supervise that and you get paid quarterly, so it's not on a per consultation basis but they're paid to manage it. So that will mean that the patient has a one-stop shop to a doctor who will take charge of managing their care and of course bring in all the other professionals, health care professionals to support them. This is what the profession has said to us. We believe this will be very effective in improving the way in which primary health care is delivered, address the concerns the doctor you spoke about a moment ago has raised and also reduce pressure on the hospital system which is vastly more expensive and where people should go with acute health care problems. Yes we're very alert to it and we've been working together with the profession to deliver better primary health care.

Thank you very much indeed.