Gloves are off before the bell

The date for the Federal election has not yet been called, but already the gloves are coming off – including here on the Central Coast.

Liberal candidate for Robertson Lucy Wicks fired off the first salvo last week, claiming the ALP has neglected women’s health on the Central Coast, and outlining concerns over a lack of maternity services, exacerbated by the imminent closure of the Gosford Private Hospital’s maternity unit.

In response, sitting member for Robertson Dr Gordon Reid said he was working with the State Government and Local Health District to find a solution for maternity services; so watch that space.

Wicks also cited research by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare pointing to a sharp decline in bulk billing rates under Labor at a time when the cost of a GP visit is sharply rising.

The ALP has now committed $8.5B to fund an expansion of the General Practitioner (GP) bulk billing incentive payment to cover all Australians, not just children and concession cardholders.

The Opposition immediately matched this commitment.

The ALP also promised funding for 50 more urgent care clinics, including 14 in NSW with one of these at Terrigal.

This comes after a $537M national commitment by the ALP to improve Medicare’s coverage of women’s health care (visit the CCN website for this story).

It’s clear from this that health is seen by both major parties as a key election battleground, but if the LNP simply matches each initiative from the ALP, blow for blow, it could quickly turn into a re-run of Rocky I.

Nationally, the Prime Minister scored an own goal last week with the ‘miscommunication’ over Chinese naval live-fire drills off the coast of NSW.

Anthony Albanese initially claimed that advance notice had been provided by China and had been discussed by the government, but a Senate hearing later revealed notice had only come from a Chinese broadcast on an emergency channel and was picked up by a Virgin Airlines pilot just 30 minutes prior to firing.

The Prime Minister tried to dismiss the significance of these events, but Australia’s intelligence Chief, Andrew Shearer, had a very different perspective, describing the live-fire drills as “a demonstration of Beijing’s increasing intent to project military power into Australia’s immediate region”.

This helped fuel the narrative being developed by the LNP that Albanese was “asleep at the wheel”.

Or, as Jennifer Hewitt of the Australian Financial Review put it: “Fortunately, Australia’s aircraft were far more agile than Anthony Albanese to avoid being hit”.

The timing of Chinese warships firing live rounds off the Australian coast could not have been much worse with the United States turning away from old alliances and Australia’s head of Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment, Jim McDowell, quitting after conflicts with Defence Minister, Richard Marles, over delays to the $10B Australian frigate tender process.

The LNP too has had challenges to manage.

Liberal Senator Jane Hume ruffled feathers in Canberra when she accused Treasury Secretary, Stephen Kennedy, of allowing his department to be ”politicised” in reference to its costings of the small business tax breaks proposed by the Coalition as well as the number of former Labor advisors now working in senior roles at Treasury, including Kennedy himself.

(Kennedy did point out in his response that he had in fact been appointed to the role by Scott Morrison.)

And finally, Parramatta MP Andrew Charlton cast aspersions over the timing of Peter Dutton’s purchase of bank shares during the Global Financial Crisis at a time when the Rudd Government was preparing a bank bailout package.

Dutton refuted the claims, saying he was not in government at the time, acted solely on publicly available information and disclosed all trades in accordance with the rules.

The ALP has since gone quiet on the matter after probing by ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson led Charlton to reveal the information had been sourced from within the Prime Minister’s office, prompting Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie to later goad Charlton for being given the job of “belling the cat”.

And all this before the election has even been called.

FACT CHECK

CCN fact-checked Lucy Wicks’ claims with Medicare-reported statistics and found:

Bulk billing rates for non-referred GP visits have indeed declined from more than 85% nationally in 2021/22 to 77.5% in 2024/25 (or 73.2% for the Hunter, New England and Central Coast);

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the cost of a visit to a GP jumped 8.8% in 2023/24.

Ross Barry