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

As I said yesterday, I think in response to the member for Longman, when we came to government, the college of doctors said that bulk-billing was in freefall and that general practice was at a tipping point. It was very clear why that was—because the Medicare rebate had been frozen for six years. As I said, I think in response to the former member, six years of freezing a GP's income while their costs continue to increase is going to have a pretty obvious result. Bulk-billing was under enormous pressure. We've done a whole range of things about that. But I did want to talk about something the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday and has been interjecting across the table again, as is his want, to the member for Sydney. He has tried to draw some sort of equivalence between a measure in the 2013 budget to realign Medicare indexation with the financial year, a measure which in the budget papers that he referred to selectively yesterday—

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