Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If you wanted to know about the state of your car, you'd ask a mechanic. If you wanted to know about the state of education, you'd ask a teacher. And, if you wanted to know about the state of the health system, you'd ask a doctor or a nurse. So thank you to the member for Macarthur, a doctor, for pointing out the incredible work that our government is doing in support of Australia's health system. We are making strides after just two years in government after 10 years of Liberal government neglect. Under the opposition leader as health minister—who, by the way, was voted by doctors as the worst health minister in 40 years—the Liberals cut $50 billion from hospitals, tried to burden Australians with a $7 GP tax and launched an outrageous sneak attack on accessible health care with the Medicare privatisation taskforce. You don't create a Medicare privatisation taskforce unless you're planning to privatise Medicare.

Labor campaigned in 2022 on strengthening Medicare and making medicines cheaper. That's what Australians voted for, and, since our election, that's what we've been delivering. In 2022, the Albanese Labor government delivered the biggest price cut in the entire history of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. No Australian pays more than $31.60 for their PBS medicine. In just over a single year, that translates to a saving of $370 million across 29 million prescriptions.

In 2023, the Albanese Labor government introduced 60-day prescriptions across 184 medicines. You may have seen some campaigning on that issue. That decision came from listening to expert advice. The coalition heard the same advice over their 10 years in government, but, to nobody's surprise, they ignored it. In fact, they ignored it on six separate occasions when they blocked cheaper medicines for Australians in the Senate. In this year's budget the Albanese Labor government unlocked $4.3 billion to deliver even cheaper medicine. We're adding more medicines to the PBS and we're capping their cost, but we're not stopping there. Our bulk-billing incentives have seen bulk-billing in my electorate alone rise by five per cent.

Of course, the Albanese Labor government introduced Medicare urgent care clinics back in 2022 over the objection of the Liberals. Medicare UCCs are open seven days a week. They accept walk-in patients without an appointment. The care they provide is fully bulk-billed and takes the pressure off emergency hospital departments and working families. More than 58 urgent care clinics have already seen more than 425,000 patients—fully bulk-billed. The health minister and I visited one of the clinics in Hobart last month, whose operators said that around 80 per cent of their patients would otherwise have had to go to the Royal Hobart Hospital's emergency department if the clinic weren't there. The minister and I visited the Launceston clinic in your electorate of Bass, Deputy Speaker Archer, where we were told just three per cent of patients require referral onto hospital or more specialised care, proving that the Medicare urgent care clinics are doing exactly the job that we designed them to do.

I am proud to say the suburb of Bridgewater, in my electorate, will be home to Tasmania's fifth urgent care clinic. It supports not just Bridgewater; it provides necessary care to Brighton, Derwent Valley and Hobart's northern suburbs. The Liberals in Tasmania scoffed at our Medicare urgent care clinics back in 2022 when they were announced. They were called disasters and cruel hoaxes that couldn't be delivered. The social media posts are still up. You should never attribute to malice what can be attributed to idiocy, because two years later the Tasmanian Liberals think the Medicare urgent care clinics are such a disaster and such a cruel hoax that they don't want five in Tasmania—they say they want at least nine. We know the Liberals love saying no, but now it's nine. The Liberal Deputy Premier reckons we're dudding Tasmania by providing just five and not nine Medicare UCCs. You can't make it up.

The Liberals have a long and chequered history on Medicare, which the member for Hasluck has alluded to. Firstly, they wanted to abolish it. When they couldn't do that, they tried to gut it. Then they wanted to privatise it, and for 10 years they starved it. This Labor government lives, bleeds and breathes Medicare. We believe in Medicare. Only Labor will stand up for Medicare.

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