Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the fabulous member for Macquarie for her question and for her ongoing advocacy, which has centred of course on her local electorate but also on issues that affect all Australians, including Medicare. Yesterday we announced a historic $573 million for women's health, delivering more choice, lower costs and better health care for women. Our new investment includes the first PBS listing for new oral contraceptive pills in more than 30 years; last century was the last time that a government made a difference here. It includes more bulk-billing and bigger Medicare payments for long-term contraceptives, the first PBS listing for new menopausal hormone therapy in over 20 years, and more endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, treating more conditions.

These changes will save women thousands of dollars. Australian women asked for change, and we are delivering it. This announcement builds on the other work we've done to strengthen Medicare: tripling the bulk-billing incentive so that more people can see a GP for free; making medicines cheaper, saving Australians more than $1 billion already as a direct result of that change; 87 urgent care clinics—we promised 50 and we delivered 87; and health care when you need it. More than 1 million Australians have got free care as a result. So many of those Australians have been under the age of 15. And just last week we announced $1.7 billion of additional funding for public hospitals and health services next year. This will help to cut waiting lists, it will reduce waiting times in emergency rooms and it will help with the ramping issue.

This is in stark contrast to the alternative approach. We know that the Leader of the Opposition was voted Australia's worst health minister. His idea of getting Medicare on track was a funding freeze and a GP tax. His idea of getting public hospitals on track was to rip $50 billion out of their funding and to have a new hospital tax. All the opposition leader's tracks end up in the same place: Australians worse off and people paying more.

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