Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline to the House the action the government is taking to ensure more Australians have access to their GPs, especially in my home state of New South Wales? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Hughes, who has been a great friend to those who face challenges with disability, special needs and special services and has, therefore, been a genuine 'medi-friend' and supporter of their access to better Medicare services. This compares with others elsewhere who might be called 'medi-frauds'; these are people who say one thing about Medicare but do the opposite—like those on the other side.

Let me give you an example. On this side, what we see is record bulk-billing rates announced last week. In the electorate of Hughes, the figures are four per cent higher for bulk-billing—which means people get to visit the doctor without paying a cent—than they were when Labor was last in office. Across the country, we have seen an increase of 4.2 per cent on the September 2012-13 quarter right through to what we see now with the recent quarter—a 4.2 per cent increase from Labor's last full September quarter to our most recent September quarter. That means hundreds of thousands of additional services for free under Medicare.

But it is not just that across the country. That's also the case with additional Medicare services in Bennelong. But we see some claims that there have been reduced services in Bennelong, which are simply false. We know that a former Labor Premier, Kristina Keneally, made the claim that there had been cuts to Medicare services in Bennelong. These claims from somebody who has been described as Eddie Obeid's puppet—not by us but by another former Labor Premier—are false, untrue and incorrect. In Bennelong, the average bulk-billing rate has climbed to 88.5 per cent, which is above the national average. That is a fundamentally important change.

At the same time, we have seen other claims by Kristina Keneally which were false. Kristina Keneally claimed that we had closed the Medicare office there. In fact, that claim lasted until it was shown that the member for Sydney had set out this closure in 2010 for every Medicare office. But, most significantly, we have seen that Kristina Keneally's claim that she had to wait for an hour for Medicare services was absolutely false. In the week that she claimed that, the average waiting time at the Medicare office was 13 minutes. How many people had to wait an hour as she claimed? Not one person. So these claims were false, untrue and incorrect. You cannot trust Labor and you cannot trust Kristina Keneally. (Time expired)