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

I thank the member for Hunter for his question and for all his hard work in delivering cheaper, better health care in the Hunter Valley—things like establishing the Cessnock Medicare Urgent Care Clinic and resurrecting the terrific GP Access After Hours service in that area. As the party that introduced the PBS, Medibank and then Medicare, Labor has no higher priority than ensuring every single Australian is able to access high-quality affordable health care, no matter where they live and no matter what their income.

As the member says, that mission is especially critical after the decade of cuts and neglect we witnessed under those opposite. We came to government promising to strengthen Medicare and deliver cheaper medicines. The Treasurer's responsible budget management not only delivered the first surplus in 15 years, it also made room for landmark investments to deliver on that promise—a position that could not be more different from the position of the former government that didn't manage a single surplus in their decade of office and had a record of shocking cuts to Medicare, initiated, of course, by the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister.

Australians will never forget that the Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, in his first budget, tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether—to make every single Australian pay a fee every single time they went to the doctor. When he couldn't get that through the parliament, he froze the Medicare rebate for six long years, ripping billions of dollars out of Medicare. Our first budget contained the biggest ever investment in bulk-billing in history, tripling the bulk-billing incentive—an investment which, just in the first two months, delivered an additional 2,500 free visits to the doctor in the member for Hunter's electorate alone. The Leader of the Opposition's first budget as health minister also tried to jack up the price of medicines by up to $5 a script, the centrepiece of his 'dearer medicines' policy. In just under two years, we've managed to lower the annual medicine bills for millions of pensioners—the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS—and introduce 60-day scripts for common medicines, saving patients time as well as even more money.

Of course, no-one will forget that the Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, tried to rip $50 billion out of our public hospitals. This Prime Minister, by contrast, agreed a landmark new funding arrangement with premiers and chief ministers in December that will deliver an additional $14 billion in extra funds over the next five years for our important public hospitals. Stronger medicines and cheaper medicines: that's what you get under this government. All we got under the Leader of the Opposition was cuts and chaos.

See this speech in context