Some of the election campaign focus has turned to health policy with a debate between the two federal MPs competing to be the nation's next health minister.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek outlined Labor's record in reforming the nation's health services.
The Coalition's health spokesman Peter Dutton hammered home its pledge to commit more funding to frontline services.
Thea Cowie reports it was, at times, a heated debate.
"PLIBERSEK: We've listed every medicine that PBAC* has recommended within the six month period that our agreement with Medicines Australia includes and I'd just like you to name one medicine that hasn't been listed. DUTTON: I'm not going to go through a list of medicines and I haven't got them in front of me. I didn't realise that you were that far removed from reality to be honest."
Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton has accused Labor of failing to deliver on its National Health Reform agenda.
In keeping with one of the election campaign's key themes, the state of the economy wasn't far away.
"The government has thrust us into an enormous amount of debt and that makes it particularly hard to upgrade emergency departments, to employ the doctors and nurses and allied health professionals that we'd want to at a frontline service. And because we want to provide people with better services. The government put uncertainty into the listing process around pharmaceuticals. They have made it uncertain for doctors in the numerous attacks that they've made on doctors and elective surgery waiting times have blown out in the course of the last six years but there is a much better way."
Mr Dutton has committed a Coalition government to quarantining the medical research budget, and retaining public funding for the abortion drug R-U-4-8-6.
But he won't guarantee the Coalition would continue to fund the nation's 61 Medicare Local offices - set up by Labor to coordinate primary health care services in local communities.
"The commitment that we've made is to make sure that money is being spent on frontline services. Now there are some Medicare Locals doing some amazing work around the country there are others that frankly have failed their local communitites. And that's on the advice of the Medicare Local people themselves that come to see us. Part of the problem was a government that didn't know what they were doing. They threw money at Medicare Locals and said 'now tell us what your function will be'."
Mr Dutton says Medicare Locals would be under review under a Coalition government, along with a range of agencies that fall under the Australian National Preventive Health Agency.
He says there are now six-and-a-half thousand people working in the agency who don't actually see any patients.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek has challenged Mr Dutton to reveal exactly what a Coalition government would cut.
"The sort of agencies that Peter's talking about are the National Blood Authority, the Organ and Tissue Donation Authority, the National Health Funding Pool which you actually need if you're going do activity based funding which the Liberals' policy says they wish to do. So Peter needs to be very specific about which agencies he wants to close and which jobs aren't going to get done in the future."
Mr Dutton has highlighted what he calls the nation's shameful Indigenous life expectancy statistics, without giving any details of what a Coalition government would do about them.
Tanya Plibersek says Labor has made considerable investments in Indigenous health.
"In (20)13/(20)14 I think we'll spend about 1.2-billion dollars compared to about half a billion dollars in the year that we came to government and that is slowly bearing fruit. It means that we'll have almost another 800 health workers rolled out because of the chronic disease package. From 2010 I think the trachoma rate was about 13 per cent, we're down to 14 per cent now. We're on track to meet the halving of child mortality."
The Greens' health spokesman and former general practitioner Richard Di Natale says he's disappointed he wasn't invited to join the debate.
He's tweeted that both parties ignored the major health challenges facing the nation.
