Christopher Pyne says few voters in his electorate seemed to care about Labor’s so-called “Mediscare” campaign, despite the claim by Liberal party officials that it had a huge effect on the outcome of the election.
He told the ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday that voters in his electorate, in Sturt in South Australia, “hardly ever” raised the issue with him during the campaign.
“I think it worried people but it didn’t seem to worry people in Sturt as much as in other electorates, and for that I’m very grateful,” Pyne said.
The admission appeared to contradict the claim by Malcolm Turnbull and other senior Liberals that thousands of voters were swayed by Labor’s warning, in the final weeks of the election campaign, that the Coalition was planning to privatise Medicare.
Turnbull lambasted Labor during his election-night speech for a text message sent on election day, purporting to be from Medicare, that warned voters Medicare would be privatised by a Coalition government.
Anyone else get a text from Medicare today? @abcnews #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/kLv4zf5WKy
— Monique Ross (@rossmonique) July 2, 2016
He also accused Labor of running “some of the most systematic, well-funded lies ever peddled in Australian politics” after the texts were sent to thousands of voters.
The Australian Federal Police are now investigating the texts.
But Labor leader Bill Shorten has not backed away from his claim that the Coalition is planning to privatise Medicare, saying the government cannot be trusted to protect universal healthcare.
He says Turnbull wants to raise the cost of healthcare by freezing Medicare rebates, wants to cut bonus payments to pathology services for bulk billing, and has tried to introduce a GP co-payment.
Shorten’s last-ditch push on Medicare was even given a boost on the eve of the election when Turnbull promised doctors’ fees would not rise. He later had to qualify that statement by saying fees may rise but doctors would not be able to blame the GP rebate freeze.
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said on Thursday that the tight election outcome showed the Coalition was a “victim of its own success” because few people thought border protection was worth voting for.
He said more voters were concerned about the future of Medicare in the election because of the “grubby Mediscare campaign” run by the Labor party.
“In part I think we’re victim of our own success,” he said.
“The fact that we stopped boats and got children out of detention, we’re cancelling visas of bikies and others to make our community a safer place, and essentially the issue had gone off the radar.”
Pyne has retained Sturt on a huge margin of 9,556 votes, despite a 3.73% swing against him.
He said Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign was “obviously a very potent campaign tool,” but voters he bumped into “hardly ever” raised it with him
