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

I thank my friend and electorate neighbour for that question because he knows the government has no higher priority than strengthening Medicare and making it easier to see a doctor. That's why we established the $750 million Strengthening Medicare fund and a task force of nurses, patients, doctors and policy experts to help us advise us on tackling the enormous challenges we inherited after nine years of cuts and neglect. That's why in the October budget we invested $2.9 billion in new primary care measures, which includes $220 million of grants to every general practice in Australia to help them improve patient access, their IT systems and their facilities. We're investing over $160 million into attracting and retaining more doctors and health workers in rural and regional Australia, and in Tasmania we're working with the Liberal state government to expand the single-employer model down there that will make training and working in a general practice more attractive for our young doctors, growing the future health workforce of Australia.

We're also delivering our 50 urgent-care services across Australia this year, providing care out in the community for those non-life-threatening emergencies seven days a week, with extended hours from 8 am to 10 pm and, importantly, fully bulk-billed free of charge, taking pressure off our stressed hospital emergency departments.

I'm asked why action is needed to improve primary care. The fact is that primary care is in its worst shape in 40 years of Medicare, and there is no single person in this country more responsible for the crisis in Medicare than the Leader of the Opposition. When he was Minister for Health, he tried to introduce a tax on every single Australian every single time they visited the doctor. When Labor blocked him in the other place, the Leader of the Opposition said proudly that he would 'do whatever it takes to get around our blockage'. So, instead, he started a six-year long freeze of the Medicare rebate—a freeze later described by the AMA as 'a sneaky new tax that punishes every Australian family'. That freeze ripped billions and billions of dollars out of Medicare, and patients and doctors in Australia right now are paying the price for the decisions made by the Leader of the Opposition. Whether it's his attempts to introduce his GP tax, his dearer medicines policy or his Medicare rebate freeze or his attempt to put a tax on every Australian visiting the emergency department in their local hospital, it is no wonder that Australian doctors overwhelmingly voted this man—who is smiling about it as I speak—as Australia's worst health minister in the history of Medicare. (Time expired)

See this speech in context