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

I thank the member for Newcastle for her question. She has worked so hard to deliver better health care in her community, particularly with her Hunter Valley-Newcastle colleagues—the member for Shortland, the member for Hunter and the member for Paterson.

On the weekend, Labor's Hunter team was able to announce the restoration of the region's nation-leading GP access after-hours service, a fully bulk billed service delivered by the hardworking members of the Hunter GP Association for more than 20 years. Funding cuts in 2020 and 2021 led to those services being reduced right across the region and actually being closed altogether at the Mater hospital in Newcastle on Christmas Eve, of all times, in 2021. But the government's decision to restore funding means that bulk-billed service will reopen this week at the Mater hospital in Newcastle, and operating hours will be extended at the Toronto clinic in the member for Hunter's electorate as well, we can say.

After-hours services across the country were scheduled to close at the end of next month, after the former government failed to allocate a single dollar to after-hours services beyond the end of June—not a single dollar across the third, fourth and fifth years of their forward estimates. But our budget three weeks ago provided a lifeline to all of those after-hours services across the country. Good-quality bulk-billed services, particularly after hours, means that patients can get good-quality care when they need it, where they need it, taking pressure of local hospital emergency departments.

That's why, in addition to extending after-hours services, a $3.5 billion investment to triple the bulk-billing incentive was the centrepiece of our budget's strengthening Medicare package—because, for Labor, bulk-billing is the beating heart of Medicare. We know that tripling the bulk-billing incentive will be a game changer for general practice. It will certainly be a game changer for towns like Cessnock, in the member for Hunter's region, where the total fee for a standard bulk-billed GP consult will go up by 50 per cent, from $50 to $75. It's a game changer for millions of mums and dads across the country who want the confidence that, when their kids are sick, they can go and see a bulk-billing doctor. It's a game changer for millions of pensioners and concession card holders as well.

Labor's approach in strengthening Medicare could not be more different from the approach of those opposite, led as they are today by a man who, after all, tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether and make every single Australian pay—every single time they went to see a doctor—his infamous GP tax.

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