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

I thank the member for Longman for that question indeed. The 88 per cent figure the member for Longman very unwisely took from his tactics committee was described by the College of GPs as a 'misleading and highly skewed' figure. I understand why the Leader of the Opposition would use it, but why would the member for Longman take a sucker punch like that? I thought the member for Longman was smarter than that. The reason why the College of GPs said this was 'misleading and highly skewed' is that it took into account all of those COVID vaccination and other services that were required to be bulk-billed to be delivered.

The actual story of bulk-billing in the last decade is a story first penned by the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister, when he said that there were too many free Medicare services, echoing the view of his mentor, John Howard, who said that bulk-billing was 'an absolute rort'. He tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether and introduce a tax for every single Australian patient to pay every time they visited their GP.

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