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

I thank the member for Bruce. There are 78,000 taxpayers in the electorate of Bruce, and on 1 July Labor will deliver every single one of those taxpayers a tax cut to help with the cost of living. I know the member for Bruce is also keenly interested to hear that every single one of the 73,000 taxpayers in the nearby electorate of Dunkley will also receive a tax cut. A second-year registered nurse at Frankston Hospital will receive a tax cut of more than $1,550, double what she would have received under those opposite. A hospital orderly will receive a tax cut of $862, compared to just $58 under the plan that those opposite had—or just $1 a week.

These bigger, better tax cuts from the Treasurer and the Prime Minister build on all of the other measures that we've been putting in place to make it cheaper and easier to see a doctor in Dunkley—like the Frankston urgent care clinic, which has already seen 11,000 patients fully bulk-billed; or the tripling of the bulk-billing incentive delivered in last year's budget.

I'm asked about the last decade. I noticed the Leader of the Opposition out in the last couple of weeks boasting about his record of bulk-billing, that it was over 80 per cent when he was the Minister for Health. Of course, he didn't mention that he then tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether. He didn't mention that he then froze the Medicare rebate, ripping billions of dollars out of general practice. That's only one recent example of the Leader of the Opposition not being quite straight about the last decade in health policy.

There's also an ad circulating called 'Peter Dutton delivers as health minister'. It only has two engagements so far: one like and one laughing-face emoji—I'm not sure whether it's laughing at you or with you, but it's fair to say it hasn't exactly gone viral so far. Another remarkable thing about this ad is that Leader of the Opposition has a very big smile on his face, which made me think immediately that it's of those deepfake AI thingamajigs—I'm not sure! But the most remarkable thing about this is that the Leader of the Opposition appears to be taking credit for there being 100 headspace services in place when he was the health minister, which sounds pretty impressive—if you ignore the fact that 90 of them had been funded and rolled out years before, by the Gillard government!

The truth is: the only things this man delivered as health minister were cuts and chaos. And every Australian remembers it.

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