Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Y () (): After a year in government, this Albanese government has delivered a budget which has measures in it that make life easier for so many people across the country and in my electorate of Dunkley. One of the big issues in my electorate is access to health care, access to bulk-billing GPs, being able to afford medicines when you need them.

Access to GPs was such a big problem in my electorate that Rachael from St Mary Medical Centre in Carrum Downs was giving evidence to a Senate inquiry last year about how to recruit GPs to her practice and to my community. As soon as we were elected, we did the work. We changed the classification of the Frankston area so that clinics could recruit more GPs. And now, with the budget, we have tripled the bulk-billing incentive in the largest increase in the 40-year history of Medicare: 74,000 people in my electorate will benefit from that.

As Rachael said, when Minister Kearney and I visited her and the amazing doctors at St Mary on Friday, this will be a big game changer for the number of people who come through their clinic and the number of people they can give better healthcare to. That's what it is all about: making sure you can get health care based on your Medicare card, not your credit card.

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