Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

If people cannot afford the $7, doctors still have the discretion to bulk-bill patients. Patients are bulk-billed by doctors by discretion and from 1 July next year doctors will have the same discretion to bulk-bill patients. Of the $7, $5 goes into a $20 billion medical research fund so that we can help meet all of those health needs into the coming decades; and the remaining $2 goes back to the doctors. A total of $468 million will help doctors to continue to bulk-bill and it will be in addition to the money that they receive under Medicare now. It is an incredibly important measure to make Medicare sustainable.

Labor has not uttered one word about how they intend to listen to the advice that Prime Minister Rudd received to make Medicare sustainable. They are talking about $16 billion more for foreign aid; they are talking about putting more money into the union movement; they are talking about putting more money into education, health and everything else. But they will not tell Australians how they will pay for it. I noticed overnight in the United Kingdom, in the Times, a call for patients to pay $10 to see a GP. I think it is a very important discussion. In that discussion they are saying they want to introduce a co-payment because there is a £30 billion gap in the UK's NHS over the course of the next 10 years.

We want to make our system sustainable, and we need to hear from the Labor Party how they will support, not oppose, that measure. They need to get out of the way.

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