Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Tangney, who was a strong advocate for increased access to continuous glucose monitoring for pregnant mums and for concession cardholders. He also knows that you can only support new and extended services in health and elsewhere in the economy if you have a strong economy and, therefore, that's the reason why we need to take steps to ensure that we have more than a million jobs created by reducing taxes on income, reducing taxes on business and taking away taxes on electricity. These are the reasons why we do these things. It's because they have a benefit in themselves and they create a strong economy which allows us to provide essential services.

In Medicare, what we've seen is an increase from $19 billion under Labor to $25 billion this year to $26 billion, $27 billion and $29 billion over the course of the budget. In hospitals, what we've seen is a 50 per cent increase in hospital funding under this government compared with Labor's last year—up from $13.3 billion to $21 billion, $22 billion, $23 billion and $24 billion. Bulk-billing is up to record levels of 86.1 per cent, up 3.9 per cent over what it was in Labor's last year. But what we are very, very proud of in particular is our record in listing new medicines, such as Orkambi for cystic fibrosis, SPINRAZA for spinal muscular atrophy and KISQALI for breast cancer. They have all made a difference.

Added to that, on the weekend, we were able to list new devices because of a strong economy, with a $100 million commitment to continuous glucose monitoring. In particular, in terms of continuous glucose monitoring, we announced that pregnant mums and nursing mums would have access, where they have type 1 diabetes, to continuous glucose monitoring technology, saving them $7,000 a year, and the same for concession card holders. We're up to 37,000 Australians with that access.

Of course, this compares with what happens if you cannot run a strong economy. We know that under Labor—

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