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

Thank you, Speaker. Explaining the answer to the last part of the member's question about why we have a bulk-billing crisis yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition tried to draw that equivalence between one measure in the '13 budget that sought to realign indexation to the beginning of the financial year to his in the 2014 budget that sought to introduce a GP tax on every single Australian patient. When he couldn't get that through in the midyear budget update later that year, it very clearly says in the MYEFO papers that—because he couldn't get that through—instead, the indexation of MBS rebates would be frozen for four long years. Now, I have said it was six years; perhaps the Leader of the Opposition only did four of those years. Former prime minister Scott Morrison extended that for two years in 2016 and 2017, and you wonder why there's pressure on bulk-billing. Unlike that, what this government did was triple the bulk-billing incentive, stop the freefall, see an increase in bulk-billing in the last12 months in every single state and territory, and last year delivered six million free visits to the doctor.

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