Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to remind the Leader of the Opposition of the gross deceit he perpetrated on the Australian people. He set out in the last week of the election to perpetrate a massive falsehood. His party sent millions of text messages claiming that the government was going to sell Medicare, and those messages appeared to come from Medicare itself. That is what they did. If that had been done in a commercial matter, if that had been done by a business, the people responsible would be facing criminal charges today—and the opposition know it. They took advantage of what appears to be a loophole in the law, which this parliament will close, to drive through this massive falsehood and deceive so many vulnerable Australians.

We are investing record levels of funding into Medicare, and it grows every year. We are investing more than $22 billion into Medicare this year—$1 billion more than last year. It will increase to nearly $26 billion by 2019-20. Under our government, bulk-billing rates are the highest they have ever been. GP bulk-billing is over 85 per cent compared to an average of 79 per cent under Labor. Across Australia last financial year there were over 17 million more bulk-billed GP attendances compared to Labor's last full year in office. So, more Australians than ever before are seeing their doctor without having to pay anything for it. We are delivering the largest ever price reduction of medicine for consumers across the PBS. More than 2,000 brands of medicine treating common conditions dropped in price for millions of Australians on 1 October, some by as much as 50 per cent or more. The Labor Party has done nothing about Medicare, except frighten vulnerable Australians with falsehoods. We defend it. We sustain it. We ensure it serves Australia.

Ms Macklin interjecting—

Ms Butler interjecting—

Ms Chesters interjecting—

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