Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make the parliament acutely aware that these health issues—some of the health issues that we face today—do not happen overnight and they don't happen within a week. They happen over decades of neglect and they happen over decades of decay. I want to use my home electorate, the electorate of Robertson, as an example of this. I know that many in my community know this for a fact. The former Liberal member for Robertson, the current state Liberal member for Terrigal and the now Leader of the Opposition, who was the health minister, systematically, over a number of years, ripped the belly out of Medicare. And what happened? We had patients that couldn't afford to see a GP and couldn't get into primary healthcare services and, as a result, they ended up needing tertiary level care. They ended up needing an emergency department and needed higher levels of care.

That is why the Albanese Labor government is getting on with the job of improving health care for all Australians and making sure that we are restoring what is the beating heart of Medicare, and that is bulk-billing. I pay credit to the health executive here in the federal Labor government, Minister Mark Butler, Minister Wells and the two assistant ministers here in the chamber right now, Assistant Ministers Kearney and McBride, one a pharmacist and one a nurse, who know the importance of health care in this country. A healthy society means a healthy economy, which means a healthy industry.

Some of the things that we are focusing on include tripling the bulk-billing incentive. On the Central Coast, that has meant over 10,000 additional bulk-billed visits to the GP. That means people are seeing their doctor for their primary care issues where they need to see them. Then there is the affordable medicines act, where medications have become cheaper for Australians. In my electorate of Robertson, that is over $2 million saved. We are talking about common medications that save lives. I have seen this policy actually working on the ground in the emergency department. I have seen patients who now have the ability to afford blood thinners that prevent them from having a stroke. They can afford that because of a Labor government policy. That is what we do.

We are also talking about the stronger Medicare grants, upgrading the infrastructure in our general practices which for so long have felt the neglect of a Liberal-National coalition. We are talking upgrading basic infrastructure—things like phones and computers; things that they use for everyday clinical operations. That is something that has gone ahead. There is the PBS copayment freeze, where pensioners and general patients will be able to save more and afford more medications that will stop chronic conditions from exacerbating and becoming acute medical conditions.

Then there is one of the hallmarks of our Strengthening Medicare policy, and that is our Urgent Care Network. We are creating a new model of care and a new medical speciality within Australia. That is what urgent care is. This is an exciting time for the medical space. If you are too sick for the GP but you are not sick enough to go to the emergency department, you go to one of these Urgent Care clinics. In my one alone we are talking nearly 5,000 presentations since it started. Those people would have otherwise gone to the emergency department for their urgent issues. These are not clinics where you just see a doctor or a nurse. In my clinic, there are also imaging services for x-ray and ultrasound. There are also pathology services, which can make sure that that patient can receive extended care at point-of-patient contact.

This is what you can expect from a federal Labor government when it comes to Medicare and when it comes to primary care and general practice. We actually put the effort in to ensure that people can see their GP and can get the care that they need when they need it—unlike what we saw in the previous decade, with the Liberal-National coalition ripping the guts out of Medicare and making sure that people couldn't get in to see their doctor and couldn't afford their medications and then ended up in the hospital for serious medical conditions. Again, I commend the health executive and the Prime Minister for the work they have been doing in restoring bulk-billing and Medicare in this country.

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