Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mayo for her question. I know how deeply concerned she is about the state of general practice—in particular, in her electorate. I've talked to her about that, and I appreciate the way she's engaging with the government on health policy as well as policy more broadly.

I share the member's concerns not just in relation to our state of South Australia but in relation to the nation more broadly. I've said that I think general practice is in the worst shape it's been in the almost 40-year history of Medicare. All of the trends in general practice are bad. The member talks about bulk-billing rates. The former government used to come to this dispatch box regularly and pretend they were at record levels, were going terrifically well, when we know the reality could not be more different. We know that bulk-billing rates have been dropping. I suspect every member of this—

Interjections from the former minister for health are ironic, to say the least. I suspect every member of this House is talking to GPs and patients who say that bulk-billing rates are plummeting in their area, GPs who tell them how distressed they are at having to change their bulk-billing policies. We know that about one in three Australians pay a gap fee in this country, and those gap fees have skyrocketed. Now, for the first time in the history of Medicare, the average gap fee for a standard GP consult is more than the Medicare rebate itself. Patients are paying more out of their own pockets than Medicare contributes to a standard GP consult.

It's not just bulk-billing rates and gap fees. We know there's a workforce crisis in general practice, with fewer and fewer medical graduates choosing to go into general practice. It's no mystery why, and it's no mystery who in this country bears more responsibility than anyone else for the parlous state of general practice: it's the now Leader of the Opposition, who tried to ram through a tax that would make every Australian pay a fee for every consult in general practice and, when he couldn't do that, froze the Medicare rebate for six long years.

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