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

The history of bulk-billing over the last several years, which is the point of the question, is very clear. When the Leader of the Opposition, the former health minister, was not able to get his GP tax through the Senate, instead he initiated a six-year freeze to the Medicare rebate that the College of GPs said, when we were coming into government, had resulted in a freefall in bulk-billing.

Now we have put in record investments to turn that around, but, if there is an issue with bulk-billing in this country—and we'd like to see it higher than it currently is—it all lies at the feet of this man, the Leader of the Opposition, who, as the Prime Minister said, was voted by Australia's doctors as the worst health minister in the history of Medicare. If that verdict is not enough, perhaps another verdict is that former prime minister Tony Abbott thought he was so bad, he didn't even let him deliver a second health budget.

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