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

I thank the member for Spence for his question. He is a terrific representative of the proud northern suburbs of Adelaide, a community that gave us Barnesy, Holden and Australia's best ever health minister, Neal Blewett, who introduced Medicare almost 40 years ago.

The member for Spence knows how important to his community Medicare and the PBS are, which is why he's constantly on his feet in this place backing in this government's plan to strengthen Medicare. At the end of budget week back in May, he hosted the Prime Minister and me at a GP clinic in Elizabeth to discuss our historic investment that week in bulk-billing. I want to remind him of a quote from the owner of that clinic, who said to the media that day: 'The tripling in the bulk-billing incentive is going to make a big difference. Our clinic was actually going to put in a $10 to $15 charge for healthcare cardholders as a gap fee, and that's not going to happen anymore.' Basically, it means more bulk-billing doctors, more bulk-billed patients and, we hope, lower ED presentations at the hospital.

Yesterday, at the Health of the Nation forum, an owner of a clinic in Townsville, in the member for Herbert's electorate, told that forum that they had introduced a gap fee for pensioners and kids in February because of cost pressures. As a result of the tripling that took effect on 1 November, they got rid of that gap fee and they've returned to bulk-billing. The College of GPs said: 'The tripling of the bulk-billing incentive genuinely is a game-changer.'

After a decade of cuts and neglect to Medicare, we know bulk-billing had been in serious decline, as much as the former government tried to cover that up. That decline was no accident. The father of the modern Liberal Party, John Howard, said that bulk-billing was an 'absolute rort'. The Leader of the Opposition, when he was health minister, said, 'There are too many free Medicare services.' So he tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether.

Well, if he tried that, we've tripled the bulk-billing incentive. Where he froze the Medicare rebate for six long years, the Treasurer this year delivered the biggest across-the-board increase in the Medicare rebate in more than three decades—

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