Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a real pleasure to rise today and just provide a little reminder of something that I sense that many Australians, at times, can take for granted. Of course, I'm speaking about the wonderful system of Medicare. In our wallets, we carry around with us a little green card, and on that Medicare card are listed our names and the names of those who are dearest to us. Should we need any medical assistance, it's wonderful to know that we have that safety net available.

I was one of six children, so, when I first got my name on a Medicare card, there were eight members of the family in total. I was roughly in the middle, so you can imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker, my excitement when I had a wife and a family of my own and I thought, 'This is great; I'm finally going to move up the card.' So I sat there with my wife and we were doing the paperwork for the card, and of course my wife said, 'No, honey, I'm going to be No. 1 on the card.' I should have noted that as a sign of things to come in our relationship, but of course my lovely wife Peta is No. 1. I know we can't really use props, but there's the wife at No. 1 and the rest of us further down the card.

It's wonderful, as I said, to know that this safety net exists. People right across Australia, including all of the families and individuals in the wonderful electorate of Stirling in Western Australia, where I'm from, take comfort in this system. More Australians are now seeing doctors without having to pay them than ever before. In fact, nine out of 10 visits to a GP are free.

The Liberal-National government has guaranteed the long-term future of Medicare. Our Medicare Guarantee Act guarantees Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme via legislation. The Medicare Guarantee Fund, established in 2017-18, ensures Medicare has the first call on income taxes each and every year. We're increasing the Medicare funding every year—up from $19½ billion in 2012-13 to $26.1 billion in the current financial year and up to $30.7 billion in 2022-23. That is funding to ensure we can continue to provide individuals and families the great comfort that comes with knowing Medicare is a safety net that is there for all of us. This government has also increased the Medicare rebate for important diagnostic services like X-ray imaging and ultrasounds. This ultimately reduces the cost to patients. Patients made 136½ million bulk billed GP visits in 2018-19. This is up by more than three million GP visits on the previous financial year.

I have found some particularly interesting statistics which demonstrate just how heavily Australians rely on the Medicare system. In a report released in August 2018 the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that more than half of all patients—11 million people—incurred no out-of-pocket expenses for non-hospital Medicare services in 2015-17. That is an impressive statistic indeed. In that same financial year, the vast majority of patients—18 million, or 82.4 per cent—were bulk billed for more than half of their visits to their GP.

I am also pleased that this government has really taken steps to recover a lot of the elements of Medicare that fell along the wayside under Labor's previous record. In fact, Labor had started a freeze that we ended. Labor had stopped listing medicines whereas we guaranteed the listing of medicines. The indexation of the Medicare Benefits Schedule, which this government introduced, is delivering an additional $1.7 billion, including 90 per cent of diagnostic imaging items, for Medicare services. Medicare funding is up—from $19 billion under Labor to $25 billion per year in 2018-19, $26 billion in 2019-20 and expanding out to $29 billion in 2021-22 under the coalition government.

See this speech in context