Minister Must Come Clean on Medicare Changes

Media Release— 5:22 pm, Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services Kevin Andrews today called on Human Services Minister Brendan O’Connor to come clean on plans to transition to cashless Medicare rebates.

“There’s a great deal of concern in the community that many of these new co-located offices will be cashless,” Mr Andrews said. “If this is indeed the case, I think you’ll see the repercussions reverberate throughout the broader community.”

Mr Andrews said pensioners and vulnerable members of the community were most likely to be affected by any move to cashless payments. “There are a lot of pensioners out there who don’t have credit or debit cards. Under a cashless rebate scheme, rather than getting cash in hand from a Medicare office, these people will be forced to wait until at least the next day to receive their rebate, putting them out of pocket and under further financial strain.”

“Whilst we recognise there are advantages to cashless operations, the government must ensure that people who do not have or use credit or EFTPOS cards are not disadvantaged.”

Mr Andrews said new Human Services Minister Brendan O’Connor would have his hands full trying to fix the mess left by his predecessor, Tanya Plibersek. “Centrelink is in crisis, welfare fraud is rampant, the quality of service delivery is at an all-time low, and now we have further information coming to light about Medicare transitioning to cashless rebates.”

“Pensioners and vulnerable members of our community are suffering as a result of continued bungling by the Department of Human Services. The first thing Brendan O’Connor should do as Minister is stand up and announce what, if anything, he is going to do to get this Department under control.”

“Brendan O’Connor must immediately come clean to the Australian public on the government’s plans to make the transition to cashless Medicare rebates,” Mr Andrews said.

“I wrote to the Minister on 14 December 2011 to ask for an urgent briefing, but my office has been advised that I will have to wait until some stage next year to receive a briefing. It is just not acceptable that a cloak of secrecy be maintained over the Department.”

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