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

I thank the member for Lindsay for another question on this program. The program is called Better Access and, as the member knows, I'm sure, the previous government decided to add 10 additional sessions to the maximum rebatable session number for a two-year period in light of the COVID lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney and regional parts of those two states. In the March budget, before the election last year, the former government decided not to extend the expiry of those additional 10 sessions beyond 31 December.

When we came to government, we kept an open mind about that. Even though the former government had made a conscious decision not to extend the additional 10 sessions, we kept an open mind about that. I indicated, in response to a question from one of the crossbench members, I think the member for North Sydney, that I would be looking at the evaluation of Better Access when it came to me—an evaluation done on a 10-yearly basis by the University of Melbourne.

What that evaluation said very clearly was, as the previous evaluation had said 10 years ago, that this is an effective program where it is able to be received, but it is highly inequitable. If you are living in a wealthy suburb in the inner parts of the major cities, you are far more likely to be able to access a session than if you are in the outer suburbs or particularly in regional and rural Australia. The evaluation then went on to say that the addition of the extra 10 sessions had made that inequity profoundly worse. What had happened is that all of the additional sessions had gone to the richest 40 per cent of Australians—mostly to the richest 20 per cent—and the poorest 40 per cent of Australians had seen their access to services actually go backwards. The number of new entrants to the scheme went backwards by seven per cent—that is to say, of all of the people every single member in this House would have had come into their office—

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